


Pulvis et Umbra Sumus

by Like_a_Hurricane



Series: Pernicious Prompting [26]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: BDSM, Bottom Tony, F/M, Frostiron Month, M/M, Post-Winter Soldier, Shower Sex, THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE PWP WHERE DID THIS ANGST AND PLOT COME FROM?!, Temperature Play, Top Loki, dream walking, eventually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-28
Packaged: 2018-02-10 08:25:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 53,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2017911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Like_a_Hurricane/pseuds/Like_a_Hurricane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark and Loki started out bored and fascinated with one another intellectually and selfishly. It might have amounted to nothing if not for an impulsive spell the trickster applied to Tony’s throat pre-defenestration, which gave him easier access, even while incarcerated, to Tony’s dreams. Loki hadn’t imagined quite how willing, perverse, and challenging the mere mortal would prove to be, in time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _pulvis et umbra sums_  
>  "we are dust and shadow"  
> From Horace, Carmina book IV, 7, 16.

As far as Tony Stark’s personal obsessions went, Loki Lie-smith was definitely one he hadn’t expected to develop, but it did.

It wasn’t just that he was tall, dark and handsome, but that helped, certainly. Legs for days had always been something Tony loved seeing in his bed, and Loki certainly had those, along with an exquisitely firm, round ass, but that wasn’t what really first made the inventor take notice of Loki.

First it was the trickster’s damned _strut_ , and the way his entire body stayed so elegantly looming and imposing and powerful, while those long legs stalked closer, each step executed as smoothly as the footfalls of a panther sidling up to unsuspecting prey. It didn’t matter if he had his hands in the air and was walking up the quinjet ramp at Agent Romanoff’s orders, gesticulating expansively about his own cage like the showman he truly was, or drawing up to Tony with intent to take over his mind; that strut kept Tony riveted, because he knew fakes like nobody’s business. He could write a master’s thesis on phonies and scam artists and all sorts of people who may at one time or another made the mistake of believing Howard Stark’s young son would be a great scam-victim because of all that money he had. Loki's cocky, unhurried stride was one of the least-fake bits of drama about the trickster's person.

“How will your friends have time for me...” Loki was putting on a show with his words, with his face, with his gestures, but the way he walked was purely the trickster’s true nature bleeding through the surface: predatory and intimidating that gave him even more of a lean and hungry look than Loki had seemed to have before.

Tony had the idle thought that he really wanted to see that strut without all the fine leather and armor in his way, because _damn_.

That was odd, by Tony’s personal standards, because despite a few experiments in college that he’d been decidedly indifferent about, he’d never actually looked at a man and immediately wanted to see that man stripped naked.

Then he was thinking about Loki naked.

Tony’s imagination was very generous to him.

It was very distracting.

All of those thoughts happened within just a few seconds: just how long it took for Loki to tap his spear against the arc reactor.

“-when they’re so busy fighting _you_?”

_C-clink._

A pause followed.

Loki tried again. _C-clink_.

“This usually works,” the god muttered. His slightly droll voice and his perturbed expression were pretty priceless.

What else could Tony do, but make a dick joke?

“Well, performance issues: it’s not uncommon, one out of five-”

Apparently, this response was not popular, if the grip around his throat was any indicator. Then the next thing Tony knew was some unpleasant glass-breaking against his everything and the chillingly familiar sensation of being in free-fall.

As first impressions went, it was an interesting one.

It lay somewhere between the distracting strut and Loki’s words not matching his tone of voice or the way he carried himself. The lack of effort that he put into his conviction suggested not that he’d thought too much or too little about it, but that he wanted people to believe he was absolutely certain, when it was not in his nature believe in anything at all, and this was his approximation of the act.

 _You’re not trying to win_ , Tony realized, but by then it was raining Chitauri.

~~

So first was the strut, which had in turn brought Tony’s attention to many of Loki’s physical assets. Clearly the gods of old gave off some sort of pheromones, or had something in the water up there, that caused them to ooze sex appeal, because the leather and capes couldn’t be the root cause––not when it wasn’t the leather that let Loki _move_ like that––and Tony had seen even Maria Hill staring longingly at Thor’s arms more than a few times while they’d been aboard the helicarrier.

Tony, having smacked one of the god’s biceps himself, didn’t have nearly the same reaction to the god of thunder that he did with the younger Odinson, but he wasn’t going to be caught admitting that it was strictly a Loki thing.

Not even when the god of lies was battered and broken, barely having crawled to the edge of his own crater where the Hulk had left him, looking not actually all that disappointed, so much as resigned and a bit like he blamed himself for missing his exit cue sometime right before the jolly green rage monster shattered his spine.

“Well, if it’s all the same to you,” he sighed, looking resigned and just a little hopeful, the little shit. “I’ll have that drink now.”

Tony might’ve smirked. Loki might’ve caught him at it.

Neither said a word about it, as Steve started reading Loki the riot act.

During the whole lecture, the inventor might’ve kept his eyes on Loki’s face, and his eyes in particular. They were so damned green, so alive and maybe a little poisonous-looking, and Tony wanted see their entire emotional range, for some reason. _It could be a fascinating study_. He shook the thought away dismissively.

~~

So the strut, and the eyes, but that was it.

“Hello, Mr. Stark.” _And apparently that damned voice._

The inventor might have emitted a small sound. Setting down his drink slowly he turned away from the bar and- “Wow, you are standing way too close.”

“This is a dream, Stark.”

“Then use my first name, and why are you still wearing pants?”

At that, Loki arched an eyebrow. “Do you dream of me naked very often, or is this a special occasion I should be aware of?”

“Actually, I more usually have a lot of nightmares, and about eighty percent of them I can blame you for, because that invasion farce was some serious bullshit, and didn’t we ship you back home in chains a week ago? What are you doing dream-walking this far already? Thor said it’d take you longer.”

“I left a spell about your person when I grabbed you by the throat, so that I would be able to further research your _unique resistance_.” He tapped the center of the arc reactor sharply. “It links me to you in a manner too harmless to be negated by my prison, and makes you much easier to walk to by a shorter route than my usual ones on the Astral Plane.”

“Ah. So this is actually you,” Tony said slowly, realizing he had apparently miscalculated, and propositioned the real deal.

“You’re not disappointed.”

“Correct. Yeah. More disconcerted, and a little confused. Why talk to me? Why not just take the data collected by your little tracker-spell and fuck off?”

“Results were inconclusive and I’ve read the only two books in my cell eight times already, Stark. I am a creature easily bored, as I believe you can well understand, being that you are as well,” Loki purred. "I did hope, upon finding my connection to this spell still intact, that you might aid in the alleviation of that intense boredom, but I had not imagined you might be so inclined. What did you prefer? Seeing me chained, or when I asked you _kneel_?"

Tony might have lost track of his thoughts a bit. _Damn, how unfair is it that he has a voice like that, fuck, I could feel that through my ribcage and we’re not even standing that close._ He’d think it was just the dream being weird, if not for how familiar the sensation was; it had felt the same just before his defenestration earlier.

Loki hummed. "Kneeling, then. Oh _good_." He made it sound incredibly indecent.

“You’re here because you’re _bored_. That’s really it? Seriously?”

“And you seem to consider my nudity the stuff of your dreams,” Loki mused, low and bleakly mocking, but not uninterested.

“I’m in a stable relationship with a woman I respect, no offense.”

Loki pinned him against the bar with one hand and zero apparent effort. Leaning in close to the inventor’s ear he hissed, “This is just a dream, Anthony. I won’t even leave marks for her to find... unless you ask me to.” He trailed two long fingers up the line of the inventor’s jaw. “You’re so nervous, despite all of your infamous experience for being quite promiscuous. Why is that, I wonder? Your heart flutters so very fast, perhaps she’ll believe you to be having a nightmare.” He smiled. “Does she sleep beside you?”

“N-not tonight,” Tony managed to say. “She’s in Prague. Some... conference.” He sucked in a breath sharply at the flick of the god’s devilish tongue at the lobe of his ear. “Look, I still haven’t agreed to this,” he insisted.

“Hence why I’m not touching your erection until you beg me for release.” He glanced down pointedly at the evidence in question.

The inventor felt everything in the world he thought he knew, where his own sexuality was concerned, suddenly turned upside-down and set back down to rest on its head, because something in the absolutely filthy promise of that voice ran down his spine like hot wax down the side of a candle.

Loki really hadn’t been wrong about the kneeling. Tony had watched security footage from Germany a few too many times, possibly because even when he knew the words being spouted by the god were total bullshit, the way his voice made them sound caused Tony to _want_.

“ _Tony Stark_ doesn’t beg,” he said, automatically, and immediately felt long, cool fingers firmly grip his chin.

“I disagree, so may I suggest instead that you instead beg only _for me_ ,” Loki suggested, sounding like he had just come up with an idea he was already proud of, even before he had finished coming up with all of it, “perhaps because by the time I’ve wrung you out with your seventh or eighth orgasm of the night, you’ll want no other to have you as I’ve done. Your woman may have your heart, and you hers, but I saw her through Barton’s memories. She is a kind soul, as we are not. I would take this from you, and it will be solely mine. I will visit you only in dreams, and only for the sake of our mutual pleasure, if you will consent, and admit to us both how very badly you wish to be conquered and possessed, _Tony Stark_.”

“S-seventh, uh...” His brain might have short-circuited for just a moment there. “Just uh... just dreams? No dropping by my lab with a riding crop as soon as you escape your cell?”

“Just dreams, made to perhaps last longer in your conscious memory than otherwise, if I want you for more than just a few hours.”

 _Holy fuck, that’s so hot._ Tony read his expression shrewdly. “You’re not joking.”

“I am very bored, and you have made me very curious about all the little ways you might be able to bend and break for me. Deny consent, and I will not touch you again in this manner, but I will torment you whenever I can no longer deal with the monotony of my incarceration. I do so only out of a limited number of options for people to torment while locked away, of course. Of my available options...” He looked the inventor up and down with open appreciation. "I would prefer the sex, wouldn't you?"

“But if I agree, that uh...”

“You’ll _definitely_ enjoy the torment more,” Loki assured. “I promise.”

“I get your sworn word?”

“If you will but consent to my terms, then yes.”

“I request a safe-word.”

Loki blinked. “A what?”

“A word, or other signal, to indicate you need to actually stop, if something is too much for me,” Tony explained. “I’m... not entirely new to submission, but uh...” He cleared his throat, looking Loki up and down pointedly. “You’re unusually male, for my tastes. Very unusually very male. Some of this will definitely be new to me.”

“And yet you do want me, so long as I will halt if you cannot take what I offer,” the god mused. “A clever enough system. You are, after all, only mortal.”

“You too, okay?”

“Pardon?”

“A word. For you.”

Loki’s brow furrowed. “Why?”

“Because I’m the most infuriating mortal you’ve ever met. I promise.”

“Ah, I see.” The trickster seemed a bit amused and empathetic, on that front. “Fine, then. Laufey. Yours?”

“Pepper,” Tony said quickly.

The god raised an eyebrow, but then shrugged it off. “Your consent then?”

“Apparently, I’m giving it.”

“More conviction would be nice, darling,” Loki murmured, stepping closer. “I do prefer my partners to be eager.”

Tony glanced down at the tented fabric of his jeans, then back up at the god’s too-pretty green eyes. “I think eager would be an understatement, wouldn’t you?”

The trickster chuckled softly, and trailed his fingers down from Tony’s chest to the buckle of his belt. Abruptly, all of the inventor’s clothing vanished. “Not a stranger to submission, you suggested. Tell me, Stark, what you have done?”

Swallowing tightly, Tony tried to focus on something other than how ridiculously exposed he felt, with Loki leaning in so close, in a nice suit, while the inventor’s bare lower back pressed against the edge of the bar. “I... I m-mostly just went to them when I wanted a whipping,” he confessed.

“So you’ve never been owned,” Loki murmured.

“I’ve got trust issues.”

“Don’t we all?”

“Clearly.” Tony cleared his throat. “I never really got into the... culture? As much? It didn’t seem to appeal to me as much, at that age. I didn’t have patience for people the way I did science, yet, then.”

“You’ve been restrained, and enjoyed pain with your pleasure, then, but what did you ever ask them to punish you for?”

“Uh... I usually just, uhm, made something up.”

Loki looked like he considered that adorable.

“It’s not like it was serious,” Tony protested a little. Then he frowned slightly. “What about you?”

“I’ve had more lovers than you have years of age. That could very well take us all night,” said the god.

“I mean have you been submissive before?”

The trickster’s eyes narrowed for a moment, but relaxed as he realized this was a genuine inquiry, not any sort of power-play. “Not for quite some time. I have never enjoyed obedience enough to make a habit of it; it’s simply not within my nature to be peaceful, but I can _provide_ peace.”

“Freedom from freedom?” Tony suggested blandly.

“If I had meant this, would you have knelt for me, Tony?” Loki rumbled, his voice very low and just slightly rough, as the bar vanished from around them, replaced by a bright and airy space with a very large bed, with sheets dyed a very dark green. The mirrored ceiling, though, looked suspiciously like the one that Pepper had made Tony uninstall from the mansion in Malibu before she would agree to move in with him there. The inventor tried not to overthink that, mostly because the prospect of potentially seeing himself prostrate before an evil god reflected there sent his blood rushing to a number of places other than his brain.

The inventor realized he was now leaning against a cool stone wall, and swallowed thickly. He felt entirely out of control, until the god took hold of his chin again.

“Answer me.”

“I wouldn’t have, and you know it.”

“Of course. Your armor would surely never allow such a thing.”

Tony made a mental note to add in failsafes to the suits along those lines: no kneeling within a ten-foot radius of an armed Loki. Something like that. “You still haven’t sworn to anything,” he reminded sharply.

Loki sighed, only a little annoyed, and a bit amused that the inventor could still focus on the likes of that. Clearly, there was more work to be done. “I swear my word that relations between us of this nature will be restricted to your dreams, and only whilst I remain imprisoned. I will respect your safe-word, and I will not leave marks upon your physical body unless asked. Once I am free of my cage, our meetings via dreams can either end, or we may renegotiate. I think allowing us one truce during which to figure that out should do the trick.”

After blinking a few times rapidly, Tony asked, “How commonly do you come up with contracts like this, anyhow?”

“I rarely find someone sufficiently interesting to bother, actually, but I find that I very much want to see what you’re like shattered by pleasure for me,” the god mused. “And your wit is not so dull as most in Asgard. Given that it is only a matter of time before I fool someone into letting me out, I’m feeling generous with it, given such an unanticipated, but not unwelcome, discovery as your willingness.”

“And yet, I still get the feeling we’re both going to regret this.”

“Ah, yes,” Loki sighed, “but not as much as you would regret missing out.” He drew four long fingers up from the line of the inventor’s hip-bone to his left nipple, at which point he paused and let one fingernail lightly, and with agonizing slowness, trace little circles over it. He leaned in to bite at the inventor’s lower-lip when Tony’s mouth fell slightly open, and then let his infamous tongue slide into the inventor’s mouth, and mapped every little corner of it, until he found every single place that made the inventor respond more eagerly.

The methodical, intelligent conquest as Loki’s tongue learned him, made the inventor moan despite himself; although, to be fair, he was naked, there was cold stone behind him and underfoot, and right in front of him was over six feet of tall, dark, crazy, and smoking-hot sex appeal kissing the life out of him.

When Loki broke away, the inventor was left gasping, and might have swayed toward him instinctively, but there was a hand on his chest, fingers trailing down over the reactor without too much interest; he was used to magic, and power-cells of such a nature were common enough, to him. This one was only of more interest to him than most others by virtue of its location, which was Loki’s true interest.

Tony was just relieved that the evil villain was more interested in his ass than the reactor, honestly.

That thought did give him some pause. _Will that be happening? The ass thing?_

“You appear concerned.”

“I guess I should let you know I’ve never been fucked in the ass, and request patience, but at the same time, don’t be gentle with me,” Tony elaborated, then yelped at the feel of one of Loki’s hands trailing away from his waist, down his lower back, to rub long fingers between the cheeks of his ass. “Woah, h-hey!”

“Don’t tense, darling,” Loki murmured. “I’m merely appraising. If I planned to take you, there would be lubricant, rather than just this.”

As two fingers rubbed slowly up and down over the very sensitive skin of the hole in question, Tony might have shuddered and felt his cock jump. It was just stroking, and teasing, a little too dry to be quite comfortable, making him feel every callous and scar on the trickster’s graceful fingertips very intimately. He struggled to breathe with it, beginning to drift a bit as he focused on the alien sensations.

“Enjoying yourself?” the trickster inquired.

Distantly, Tony realized he’d subconsciously started to move his hips back and forth just slightly, with the little fricative strokes of the god’s fingertips. “A-apparently.”

“A little louder and clearer for me, pet.”

“It f-feels good,” the inventor said, shaking a little. His brain might not quite be in sub-space yet, but his body was clearly having a great time already.

“I am going to stretch you open for me, while you lie back on that bed and suck me,” Loki purred. “You will open that clever mouth of yours and fit as much of my cock into it as you can.” His index finger pressed the tip against Tony’s entrance, slow and insistent, feeling the mortal tremble a little and breathe more raggedly as it slipped inside once the god applied an old and familiar spell.

“O-oh, f-fuck,” Tony panted.

“Is that a request, pet?”

“N-no, my god,” the inventor gasped, as that finger curved inside him and pushed against a spot he hadn’t known was there, beyond the fact that he knew there were toys for that, and it was apparently why anal sex appealed to people. Suddenly, he too understood the appeal, and had a whole new respect for his prostate, and the dexterity and surprising strength of the god’s fingers too. “ _Loki_.” Also it apparently made him moan the name of the god of lies in a tone he hadn’t known himself capable of. _Wow, I sound kind of wantonly slutty. Why is that so hot?_

“How devout of you.”

“I’m atheist. You’re the first god I’ve ever actually met,” Tony panted, then swore quietly under his breath when the trickster’s finger left him bereft. “Holy fuck.”

“Well, if I am your god, Tony dear, that would be what I’d like to attempt, but first, go lie on the bed for me, on your back,” the god commanded firmly, stepping back just far enough to allow him to escape.

It was only then Tony realized that at some point, the god had lost all but his pants. He folded his arms across his chest and visibly drank in the view for just a moment or two, tugging his lower lip between his teeth. “May I have a few moments, sir?” he asked idly.

“Why?”

“I want to look at you.”

Something difficult to read flashed across the god’s expression, but it was chased away by a slightly smug smirk. “You must touch what catches your attention as you go. Walk around me, and show me your interest.”

There was something behind that Tony was sure neither of them wanted to talk about without being blind drunk first. He filed it away for later and approached Loki with both hands raised slightly to touch, prompting the god to shut his eyes lightly and his lips to curve up slightly once he realized Tony’s intention was to touch his eyes. They re-opened once the inventor’s fingers drifted away again, down along the god’s cheekbones then one tapped the end of his chin while the other traced slowly down the bridge of his nose. Then the thumb of the chin-anchored hand brushed the god’s lips, just before all of the inventor’s fingers trailed down his throat to his collarbone.

Loki looked on with approval and interest, one of his own hands carding through the inventor’s hair as the mortal’s hands moved over his chest with the same intense fascination, which the god found... novel. His frame was wiry, and narrow, but the inventor’s gaze remained fixed, fascinated, as his fingers trailed over lines of muscle that lacked the bulk and ridiculously clear definition usually prized amongst Aesir warriors. Then again, Stark himself was stocky, and muscular without being bulky or possessed of the more heroic shoulder-to-waist ratio so epitomized by one Steve Rogers, and Stark was even more famous and popular than the colorful super-soldier.

Perhaps in Midgard, there was more appreciation for such smaller, more clever men like this inventor.

It was a thought for another time, when Tony Stark wasn’t holding onto his hips and staring up at Loki like he was afraid that getting his question answered would cause him to do something he was nervous about. “May I use my mouth as well?”

Yes, clearly the time for abstract thinking was decidedly _not now_.

As such, Loki vanished his trousers with a snap of his fingers.

“Now you may.”

Tony was staring. He was doing a few calculations in his head. with an effort, he managed to prevent himself saying, _Okay, I’m questioning the stories where you were supposedly a_ mare _because clearly you’re hung like a-_ “Wow.”

“You’ll have time to become more familiar with my cock shortly. Finish your other task first, pet.”

The inventor nodded, and moved his head up to lick up along the hollow of Loki’s left hip, and then his right, as his hands moved up the god’s sides to his waist before trailing back down again, gripping those hips as he kissed down Loki’s inner thigh, careful not to touch the all-too-tempting cock hanging in his face. He treated the other thigh similarly, as his hands ran up and down Loki’s long, long legs.

 _Sweet merciless science_ , those legs were beautiful. After also applying a few brief kisses to the god’s feet at a very pointed look from Loki (who had noticed his hesitation there, and his brief attempt to skip them) Tony had to move around behind Loki to finish licking the rest of the lines of those legs that he found most distracting, and was aware of the trickster’s head turning just enough to continue watching over his actions.

Of course, then there was... a very sacred place.

Tony might’ve made a noise. “Damn, your ass is fine.”

“Show rather than tell, pet.”

 _Right._ Tony’s hands moved up the backs of Loki’s thighs to cup both buttocks reverently. He had a sudden, vivid image in his mind of the god’s ass as he fucked the inventor into the mattress. He praised himself once more for how clearly brilliant he had been to install a mirror over his bed. He squeezed a bit harder, grabbed and groped only a little more, before moving on and up Loki’s spine, starting with his tongue right at the base of it, working slowly up.

Loki’s long, pale back was made for marking up. Tony ran his fingernails down it just a bit sharply, and saw the curve of the god’s smirk quirk a little higher. Moving to stand in front of him once more, his thoughts heavy and hazy as he was used to feeling more often after he’d been enjoying endorphins for a long while first. He trailed both hands down the god’s arms pulling them a bit closer to him until he got, at last, to the god’s hands. Holding Loki’s gaze all the while, he traced the lines on both of the god’s palms and then sucked each finger into his mouth, one at a time, giving each one individual attention, suction, and swirls of tongue, until the trickster was finally seeming to breathe about as quickly as Tony was, making the inventor smirk.

“On the bed,” Loki rasped. “Let your head hang over the edge of it.”

Tony’s body was already in motion before the order was even complete. He spread out on the bed and let his head hang just in time for the god’s cock to once more appear very near his face. “Oh, I see.”

“Given that your mouth will be occupied, I assume you have another means of communicating potential distress?”

“Right.” Tony was staring again. “Two finger-taps, a rest and a third tap?”

Loki nodded.

“You’re pretty courteous for a would-be dictator.”

“I tend to be, so long as my orders are followed, pet,” the god said, tilting the inventor’s head back a bit further, and letting his cock brush Tony’s lips. “Suck.”

The inventor met his eye for a moment, then smirked just a little. It had been years, but he never learned a skill without going so far as to fully master it. That was part of how he’d accumulated over five doctorates so far.

He hadn’t actually mastered dick-sucking, but he had learned control of his gag reflex, one night he had won a bet off of a sword-swallower and had been just drunk enough to think learning to swallow swords was a swell idea.

Starting at the base, though at that angle it was a bit awkward, he licked his way up, slow and lapping, appreciative, letting his lips drag over the sensitive skin too as he went. Unhurried and thorough, he worked his way up to just under the head, and then engulfed the whole tip in his mouth, sucking hard. He was rewarded by Loki reaching over him, pushing his thighs apart.

“Do raise your hips up for me. You may place pillows under them if it’s easier for you, but you are not to stop sucking.”

Tony made a noise, and managed to reach for one of the pillows at the head of the bed, fold it in half, and tuck it under his lower back. Then Loki pressed deeper into his mouth, distracting him thoroughly as he controlled his breathing and teased a bit with his tongue, feeling the god grip his hair tighter and then––

 _Fuck, that’s––literal_ fucking _magic_. Loki was using powers capable of improbably bending and twisting bits of reality by means earthly science was just barely beginning to discover, and he was using it to press what felt like two of the god’s long fingers into his ass, slick with lube and merciless even as Tony’s body tensed up at the sudden intrusion.

He then almost choked as Loki began to fuck his mouth in shallow little strokes. Focusing on that, and on sucking and licking and every trick he had ever used for oral sex past partners male and female that weren’t very female-anatomy-specific. The distraction was enough he stopped over-thinking and opened up to Loki’s magic pushing into him deeper and–– _that’s deeper than fingers could get, it has to be, oh fuck_. And it was getting wider, very slowly, and humming.

The humming vibration was right against his prostate, and Tony’s hips bucked up into the dazzling sensation of _that_ as it shot up his spine and made him moan around the god’s cock. He could see Loki watching his face carefully, sliding in deeper with apparent caution.

 _Oh right._ Tony moaned again, and moved his head back and down until he managed to get the god all the way to the base, making them both struggle for breath for only slightly different reasons.

“Oh, pet, yes, that’s perfect,” Loki hissed, then pulled back only to thrust in again, a little harder, at the same time gesturing toward his other active spell––or was it a part of the dream? Tony didn’t have sufficient brain power left to wonder for long––causing Tony to buck and arch again with a muffled high keen as it felt again like Loki’s fingers, three this time, fucking him fast and relentless. It burned and it ached, and Tony’s cock was smearing pre-come all over his stomach as he tried to arch his hips up for more, while Loki fucked his mouth deep and unhurried.

But then he pulled out and commanded, “Look at yourself like this, pet. You have such a lovely mirror for it.”

The inventor’s eyes snapped open and his whole body trembled at the sight of himself arching and writhing a little as he was opened up by something invisibly fucking into him, with his lips red and swollen from Loki's treatment of them. He could still clearly imagine it even as Loki coaxed his head back down and slid his cock right back into the mortal's mouth again, so fast that Tony's eyes watered and he grabbed the sheets hard enough to audibly tear a few threads of its weave. He then moaned sweetly.

“You need something, pet?”

In response, Tony sucked harder and managed an infinitesimal nod.

“You’re very close, aren’t you?”

Another, slightly more urgent nod, and more almost-pleading suction.

“Should I slow this down for you?”

The speed of the slick, illusory fingers working in and out of Tony’s ass wound down, slower and slower.

The inventor almost sobbed with how much that made him ache for _more, please, Loki, please more, please fuck me._

“My poor dear pet,” he soothed, thrusting only once more into Tony’s mouth, slow and savoring it, before he at last pulled out.

Tony coughed a few times, then inhaled sharply.

“What is it you need, pet?”

“P-please, you know what I need.” _Is that seriously my voice? Wow, I hadn’t heard my own been-cock-sucking voice in over a decade. Did it used to sound quite that pleading? Probably not, or I might have done this more._

“Yes, but I also want to hear you beg, before I give you any relief.”

The slow retraction of the magics involved in the general region of Tony’s ass caused the inventor to moan outright at the loss. “ _Please_.”

“Specify,” Loki scolded, cradling his face. “If you are obstinate, I will have to punish you first.”

Tony suddenly had the thought that he needed to come up with a list of things the trickster would consider misbehavior, so that he could apply them next time he wanted to be spanked. The sudden mental image of Loki’s elegant hand slapping his increasingly-red ass repeatedly also made an incoherent noise happen, getting lost on its way to his throat, but still audible.

“If you are good for me, my pet, I will always reward you. Now beg me for what you need, and I will give it to you.”

In a still-gravelly whisper, Tony pleaded, “My god, please fuck me.”

“Louder.”

“Please fuck me!” he tried, louder, and winced slightly. He then made a relieved noise at the feel of Loki’s hand suddenly resting across his throat, feeling warm and tingly for a moment, with healing. “Thank you, now fuck me, please?” he then tried, voice sounding less rough.

“Very good. I would _hate_ to damage your voice before I make you scream for me, Tony dear.” Then he climbed onto the bed and tugged the still-twitching inventor into the middle of it, and rolling him onto his front, knees bent up under him, not letting him drop them to get friction from the bed against his cock, when Tony made the attempt.

“You will come when I tell you to.”

The inventor moaned a little, and then a bit louder when he felt the god’s long legs slip between his own and push them slowly apart. Then he felt the head of Loki’s cock pressing into him and he struggled not to fight it, or tense up, because _like a goddamn horse_. “If I give birth to an eight-legged foal after this, I’m making Asgard provide child support fit for gods,” he groaned.

Loki snorted, amused despite himself. “I’m certain she’ll have your eyes.”

Tony couldn’t help it. He sniggered a bit, then abruptly changed tune as more of Loki’s cock began to slide deeper into his body. The moan that escaped him tried very hard to form syllables, but didn’t quite succeed, although it varied in pitch quite a bit. The pain was still there, and he felt forced open almost to the point of breaking, but he felt only the slide of lube and more pressure, more heat, more––more everything.

 _“Loki, oh my god_.”

Loki kissed the back of his neck almost tenderly. “You’re so tight, my pet, and how you clutch at me.” He pushed in the last few inches until he at last bottomed out, and hissed satisfaction. “Push back against me.”

Tony tried. His muscles protested, but he shifted his weight back until his ass was pressing flush against the god’s hips. Some of the pain of the stretch eased, at the slight change in angle, and he could almost breathe again.

“You are beautiful like this. Fuck yourself slowly for me.”

 _You bastard_ , the inventor thought, but tried to obey, rocking his hips slowly forward, feeling the god slide out a few inches, then pushed back, slow as he could. He managed it a few more times before he realized Loki had done it to make him more aware of the muscles he was tensing up with each shift, and began to relax them, group by group, until he was leisurely fucking himself a bit deeper, and making small breathy sounds he couldn’t entirely suppress.

Then the trickster seized both of his hips and began pounding into him faster, and much deeper, applying to each thrust as much refined control as brute force, aiming each one right at the optimal angle to catch-and-drag along Tony’s prostate each time.

Tony did indeed scream: sharp and ecstatic and _gone_. Tony was gone. He could do nothing but squirm and pant and cry out as he was taken, lost in the feel of Loki over him, in him, around him. Noises and words escaped him, but most of them didn’t even make sense, and they were cut off entirely by a high keen as Loki’s hand settled around the base of his cock and squeezed just a little too tightly.

“N-no, please,” the inventor choked.

“Please what, pet?”

“Please let me come.”

“I’m far from done with you.”

Tony almost wept with it. He had never been edged quite this hard before and his body began to shake all over. When he felt a sudden smack against his ass, he swore he saw stars from how close to coming it dragged him. His cock ached and everything else was beginning to join it, in one desperate mantra of: “Please, Loki, please I need to come, please fuck, I can’t, I can’t-”

“You’re doing so well for me, Tony,” Loki panted in his ear, “that I will give you a choice, and I will heed your decision.”

 _How the fuck are you so coherent?_ Tony lacked the energy and motive to protest. He whimpered and nodded instead, to let the god know he’d heard.

“I can let you come now, and continue fucking you, until you come again, or I can hold you here, like this, until you can come at the same time that you feel me filling you up with come, marking you with me from the inside.”

The inventor’s hips jerked, and he sobbed again breathlessly. “P-please let me come, and then fuck me until come again. Please.” He felt the god’s fingers grab his hair tight and drag him up by it until he was sitting up fully, back pressed against Loki’s chest, and the god pushed into him still deeper. “ _Please, Loki, my god, please!_ ”

“Well then.” Loki’s hips pulled slowly back. “Come for me, _now_ , Tony,” the god hissed, just as he thrust back in and again picked up the same punishing rhythm as before. “Scream with it.”

Tony screamed, and then yowled, and moaned through the longest climax he’d ever had, then eventually was left whimpering and with eyes watering again as Loki kept pounding into him, hyper-sensitive as he was. When he started to struggle, the god ran one hand down his side, slow and gentle and full of heat that flooded through his whole body until he sucked in a breath and cringed at how it stung, and how it brought him back to full hardness all too fast as Loki changed the angle again.

Being pulled sharply back onto the god’s cock over and over, filled and bruised and with the god’s hands leaving marks on the skin of his hips, he drifted, nothing but a raw nerve suffused with pleasure and pain and Loki muttering little compliments and bits of encouragement in his ear when he could find sufficient breath.

Looking up at the mirror again brought it all crashing back into visceral need, as he saw his own ass spread wide for each of the god’s thrusts, and became all the more aware of how deep Loki was in him, the thick, blunt head pushing him open wide and dragging across his prostate until he was back to shameless writhing.

That was when the first silk scarf tied itself around Tony’s left wrist with one end of itself, and the bedpost with the other end. A second did the same with his right, just before Loki dragged them both further down the bed, just enough to create tension along the bonds.

The god then pushed the back of Tony’s neck down until his face was buried in the bed, used the other hand to reposition one of the inventor’s legs, opening him up wider slowly before he began to pick up the pace of his thrusts again.

With the change in angle leaving him feeling all the more helpless and ridiculously exposed, Tony was on the edge again within a few thrusts, and back to begging and emitting higher-pitched noises of need again.

“Close,” Loki growled, “So close, pet, come for me, let me feel you break.”

Tony choked off a cry of the god’s name, at that, and started to come, shaking apart with it, Loki’s name falling from his lips like a benediction until the god followed him swiftly over the edge, both of them continuing to grind and roll with it as they rode out their climaxes, before falling more still.

It was several long minutes before the inventor could think clearly again. By then, he was making a noise of loss when Loki finally pulled out of him. Then he felt––well that was a certainly a new, slippery and stretched sort sensation. Being able to feel quite so much of Loki’s come inside himself was unexpected. And unexpectedly _hot_.

Then he vaguely recalled that this was a dream, and he wouldn’t feel it after he woke up, and felt oddly disappointed.

“You are well?” the god asked, sounding drained himself, but smugly satisfied.

“I’m fucked out and I dunno if I can move,” he muttered, understandably muffled by the mattress in his face. He lifted his head. “I’m willing to call that a holy fuck, though, damn. Same time tomorrow?”

Loki smirked at him, and bit at the edge of his jaw. “I have no other plans, and we have little time left for now. Perhaps earlier.”

That would require going to sleep closer to an earlier hour, but if he was left feeling like _this_? “Sounds good. I like this plan.”

~~

Tony had expected life to get weird, due to the Loki thing.

After all, he was the engineering head of his own company during working hours, dating his own CEO whenever they could find a few evening hours together, a S.H.I.E.L.D. consultant in between, and an Avenger at all hours, and by night... then what? BDSM boy-toy of the god of lies and mischief, apparently.

The two occasions so far that a “session” with Loki had been interrupted by alarms going off and the Avengers being called to action had led to punishment involving some sort of rope-art hanging-arrangement holding Tony suspended while the god had given him forty strikes with a riding crop on his ass, and then fucked him so hard some of the ropes might have lost their original structural integrity, until Tony was being held up solely by Loki’s inhuman strength at the same unique angles and _that had been so hot_ the inventor might have attempted to set an alarm on his phone the next time. Loki had found out, of course, and the results of _that_...

Spectacular. Tony got hard just thinking about showers, now. And handcuffs. And anything else Loki had used on him to date, actually.

That was one of the many major problems he didn’t start noticing until about the fourth month that they’d been at it this––whatever it was. The god had mentioned... he’d suggest that it would be fine for Tony to ask him to leave marks he could see outside of dreams. It had been stated, explicitly, at the beginning, which he knew was because Loki wanted him thinking about it, trying it was inevitable.

It was the timing that was unwise, though. That’s all.

~~

“You’ve been quiet, Stark. What did you make of this?” Fury asked, with clear reluctance. They were under a tent. It was a fancy and high-tech sort of tent, there were computers in waterproof arrangements with impressive display interfaces. There were scientists running around with bits of alien technology. There were even armed gunmen around the place absolutely everywhere in Tony’s peripheral vision, always at just such a distance that he could see them, but not at first determine that they weren’t looking his way, which was slowly starting to drive him up the wall.

Fancy government tent. It was still just another circus to Tony, today. It had been just that sort of day, and the inventor was all out of slap-stick. Sarcasm was all he had left, and bitterness, and a great big side-order of resentment.

“I learned that the Kree empire are a bunch of imperialist assholes, but not as much as we are,” Tony sneered. “You kept the corpses of their fallen soldiers and tried to _make stuff_ with the remains. As a scientist, I commend your practicality, but you had to know this was diplomatic poison! This was clearly an advanced, sentient race. It would make sense that they, like humans, might happen to have something sacred along the lines of burial rites they would be willing to start a war over, especially if they happened to be certain _we would not win_. I don’t actually care that you offended their traditions. Fuck that, Fury, you’re the leader of what used to be a covert and secretive agency, here. Why wasn’t this _buried deeper_?”

“It wasn’t for lack of trying,” Coulson said.

“Of all the people here, Phil, you’re still the one who would deserve death the least. Just remember that,” Tony said, without turning his gaze from the older S.H.I.E.L.D. veteran, “the _next_ time.”

“I won’t.”

The inventor smiled bitterly. “That’s why you, I trust a bit more, except all the holes in your head, and your memory, which is really a bit distressing, but still. At least your lies and omissions aren’t so deliberate. Conveniently.”

“Stark...”

“As hot as I’d look in a uniform like Agent Hill’s, you’re not roping me into leadership here. You don’t trust me enough to let me see everything I need to see, and the more all of you are exposed to my work as I develop it, the faster you’ll adapt to hiding your data from me, so no. I’m not giving you this, just because we’ve run into more of the Kree and Phil is having another existential crisis, not that I blame you dude, but you won’t exactly let me help either.” He looked between the two of them. “Glad we could have this chat. I’m going to go dismantle the permanently damaged pieces of this armor now.”

And so he left.

Once free of the armor, he inspected himself for further damages.

There were rows of bruises, some scrapes, and some burns blistered up one side of his neck. He still wasn’t entirely sure when or how he’d gotten the burns, but JARVIS would doubtlessly include it in the overall damage report in an hour or so.

He tried not to think about corrupt systems being impossible, after a certain point, and how no forests could thrive without occasional fires. That would get him thinking about how to fix S.H.I.E.L.D., how to redesign it and capture its efficiencies and potential into a newer, more inescapable form.

Shaking it off wasn’t easy. S.H.I.E.L.D. was a mess, but there were pieces of it that made parts of Tony’s whole brain light up with possibilities, sometimes. Then he realized the implications of some of those structures later, and felt a bit sick. _Poor Anthony Stark_ , he thought. _You can fix anything except people. You do nothing but break those, given time._

The worst voice in his head was always Tony’s very own. The words were sometimes Howard’s, but this... this was himself.

He might have been a bit too drunk, still, when he did finally sleep.

That would explain why, once he hit dream-land, he was immediately in handcuffs, but the position of his arms over his head at their current angle wasn’t working out and he hissed.

“Watch it, that’s injured,” he hissed, and felt his arms immediately lowered, and Loki’s fingers had replaced the cuffs, holding him gently.

“My apologies. I hadn’t realized you would bring those with you.”

“Do I not usually bring along these?”

“Sometimes, but not the pain with them,” Loki said. He examined the inventor’s face for a long moment. “You want for the pain.”

One corner of Tony’s mouth twitched up, self-mocking. “When don’t I?

“Not quite this way. There is a difference between punishing oneself, and actually achieving a degree of punishment which addresses your crime, to the satisfaction of your own heart and mind,” said the god. “The pain you feel for these injuries... sit on the bed, pet, and let me see them.”

Tony had an uneasy moment of awareness between wanting to relax into the comfort of being cared for by another person, and being disconcerted by the surreality of his own position here, and with whom. What did it say about him, that he could have super-villain thoughts of his own for brief moments that he later dismissed as terrible ideas all, in the same day that he was submitting to being petted by _an actual convicted-of-attempted-genocide super-villain_ , and consider he could find the latter to be more comforting than the presence of _actual-brilliant-ray-of-summer-sunshine-made-human-with-a-particularly-droll-wit_ Pepper Potts in his own bed, being in love with him.

“You’re bleeding.”

“It’s... been a bit of a day,” the inventor admitted, very quietly. When long fingers tugged his chin up, he let his head tilt up so that he could look Loki in the eye.

Watching his face, the god’s own expression seemed unusually open. He ran fingers down along Tony’s jaw. “How many of the weights upon your mind right this moment are to do with thoughts alone, that you have not acted upon?” he asked, in tones which would not accept anything less than an answering truth.

That did force him to think about it from a different angle. “What if the thoughts include emotions that are both unwise and not contained?”

“Were any of them in my presence?”

“Y-yes.”

“Do not include them in your calculations. They can be considered unrelated. I would neither punish nor reward you for any of them,” the god said, very neutrally.

Tony blinked, both slightly reassured, and a little uncertain what to make of that, but it didn’t register as a threat. “Eight. Eight different ways I could take S.H.I.E.L.D. over from within, strip it down to basics and rebuild anew something far more efficient, with at least eight different specialized factions...” He frowned slightly. “Three plans to just wreck it and build something myself to try and do the good that they do without all the same flaws. One of them, I could get away with in five minutes, but it would have me stuck babysitting the whole project for over fifteen years, and who has the patience to rule an entire planet for over a decade, I mean-” He glanced up at Loki. “Oh. Sorry.”

“Actually, I agree with you. I didn’t last a week, last attempt, and Asgard doesn’t actually have an entire planet, anymore... Long story,” Loki mused. “Interesting hobbies you have, though. I would’ve loved to see what must have been running through your mind when you dared threaten me.”

“Get any closer to an answer to that?”

“You’re not done counting.”

“You don’t want to hear any of the plans?” Tony asked innocently.

Loki’s pupils might have visibly dilated a bit. He cleared his throat. “Later.”

Tony held his gaze steadily, a bit too calculative, as he drew himself down to kneel beside the bed, suddenly finding that position more easy than remaining on the bed. Then he asked, “Who were you running from, anyway? You sure that bomb was enough?”

He honestly hadn’t been expecting a sharp, matter-of-fact slap across the face: open-handed, precise, and restrained. Knowing Loki’s strength as he did, it was pretty gentle, but it still stung like a bitch and Tony gasped with it, his head ringing crystal clear and blank for a blissful moment. He could feel his entire body trembling and his whole face aflame with the sting, or simply from his sudden flush.

“Do that again,” Tony whispered. “ _Please_.”

“Oh, pet. I know what you need.” A hand brushed his stinging cheek, as Loki stood up, looming over him a bit, then pulled his fingers away shortly before his other hand slapped the other side of Tony's face, just as hard. The inventor’s whole body jerked with it and his breathing was ragged gasps. He might have fallen over if Loki hadn’t cupped his cheek, bidding the inventor to rest it against the god’s thigh.

Wincing only a little at the contact against his still-stinging skin, however gentle, Tony then slowly relaxed into the loose embrace, as Loki whispered to him that he was a very _good boy_ , to know better than to make such a mistake as investing himself in such a doomed and futile organization as S.H.I.E.L.D., and that should’ve been funny, but Tony instead felt only relief, and comfort. _Good. I am good? Yes, good._

It took him a few minutes to realize he was crying silently as the god stroked his hair, and held him close, while also standing over him protectively. Tony let his eyes fall shut and just absorbed that sensation: like he wasn’t the biggest, meanest monster around, like this. Like he didn’t have to be, either, for once; he could trust Loki to be that, and so long as he was Loki’s, he’d be safer naked in the god’s presence, than armored almost anywhere else in the galaxy, probably.

Slowly, Tony let go of all of his remaining armor, inside and out, just because he could, for a little while, around someone he probably couldn’t even hurt if he tried. He also unchained a few things. Why not?

Loki could take it. Loki could even survive it and come out still standing.

He might even _like_ it.

Slowly lifting his head to meet the trickster’s gaze, he asked calmly, “Think I could handle two of you?” Seeing the trickster’s expression go from mild concern for his pet to molten arousal quite that fast made him smile slow and lazy. He wanted pain, and Loki could give him plenty. “I want you to break me, if you can, I think.”

“Do you doubt me, pet?”

“Will you make me bleed?”

The brief flash of outright longing across the god’s expression indicated that he might really want to. “Will you beg me for it?”

“Yes.”

“The world is much simpler, is it not, when you can beg for what you need, and be given it?”

“If it were simple, you’d be bored by it,” Tony shot back lightly. “So you see if you can break me now. It’s a different day.”

Loki looked thoughtful, curious, and deeply pleased. “I hope you will enjoy sleeping through your alarm by perhaps an hour, since it will give you a total of three hours of sleep, given how late you were out drinking, it seems. You will spend that extra hour screaming.”

~~

Tony learned something interesting about healing magics three hours later, when he lay on the bed face-down with his hips in the air, Loki’s fingers trailing over the still-bleeding whip-marks on his back, each ghost-light touch a little more agonizing. The god was hardening inside him again. Tony wasn’t sure how many times that had happened anymore. He felt... very wet. Everywhere. Wet and sticky with sweat, and blood, and streaks of his own release.

Ten times in three hours. Loki hadn’t been supplying healing magics, either. Tony suspected he wouldn’t exactly be this sturdy outside of dream-land, but he was more than willing to just suspend disbelief and keep taking what Loki offered so freely.

Spent and panting, the inventor choked back a sob when the god began fucking him again, slow and deep, dragging out each ruthless stroke, the sound still more embarrassingly wet with each withdrawal.

“Almost all healing spells have built-in pain-relief, you know,” the trickster murmured, “because in truth, magic rebuilding damaged nerves hurts far worse than the initial damage does. It’s agonizing, in fact.” One long finger trailed upon a wound low on the inventor’s back, as Loki whispered something against his throat far older and stranger than All-Speak could translate.

Tony’s entire body jerked at the sudden, searing-hot stab of sensation, unexpectedly bright and inescapable, and he emitted a scream. The involuntary tension through his entire body made him clench a little tighter around the god’s cock, somehow driving him in deeper.

“You took fifty lashes today so far. Now I think you shall enjoy them anew.”

The inventor moaned. “Please. Another. Please don’t stop fucking me, my god, please, take me.”

The next wound was a bit deeper, and stung as the god scratched a fingernail across it, just before murmuring the spell again.

More prepared this time, Tony only sobbed and cringed with it, and moaned weakly at how it lingered longer than the first one. As soon as it stopped, he gasped and sobbed all the harder, his whole body shaking as he felt himself grow hard again, and felt Loki drive into him all the harder.

“Beg me, pet,” Loki murmured. “Let me hear how you need this as much as I do, and beg me sweetly.”

Tony whimpered and tried to wriggle his hips back for more friction, then whined when he couldn’t. “Loki, please give me more, please. H-heal me, h-hurt me,” he gasped.

Loki sucked in a breath sharply, and healed another two lash-marks at once.

This time the inventor writhed with it as he screamed, thrashing in reflexive efforts to get away from the pain, but the bonds tying his hands to the headboard, and Loki behind him, curved over him and hissing in his ear, about challenges...

_Wait, what?_

That was when he felt Loki slip a finger into him, alongside his own cock.

Tony gave a muffled moan at the stretch.

“You proposed taking two of me. Let me assure you that the logistics, with hips like ours, do detract somewhat, but I will fill you as much as you may need.”

Another swipe of agonizing healing, and by the time it was over, Tony had a cock and two long fingers in his ass and was breathing more raggedly. “St-stings.”

“It will hurt.”

Tony rolled his hips back sharply for more. “Fuck yes _please_.”

“Are you afraid that this is all you are, Tony? A man in love with his own pain?”

The inventor shook his head stubbornly, lips pressing shut against words he didn’t want to set free.

Unluckily, the god wasn’t done extrapolating: “You’re afraid that you’ve deluded yourself into more pain than you deserve, because you like it, and yet the guilt does gnaw, does it not? Are you whipping yourself and criticizing yourself until you cannot meet your own eye in the mirror without hesitation, because you like it? Or because you would be a monster without it?”

“F-fuck you.”

“You wanted me to break you, pet. If you wish me to stop, you know what you need to tell me,” Loki murmured, closer to his ear again. Then he healed another mark from the lash, slow and burning.

Tony screamed with it and then dropped like a puppet with strings cut, except where Loki held him up, and kept fucking him. Everything hurt.

“Would you rather have all of your accomplishments given to a ghost, or never be allowed to win them in the first place?” the trickster asked.

“You asking if I’d prefer your flavor of self-defeating egotism, given a choice? I thought this was _my_ whipping.”

Another two slashes slowly healed. Slower than before.

Tony almost passed out before the pain lifted. His face was wet again with fresh tears when he buried it in the sheets. _Four fingers_ , he realized dimly, and then whimpered because he felt stretched too far, too raw.

“What a creature you might have been, raised as I had been. How similar and how different we could have been, but I do like you as you are. You are the very soul of defiance, to the very point of madness, and how could such a monster as I not be captivated by that?” Another slash healed, and more screaming. Loki struggled to hold out despite how the inventor’s body tightened around him again. Only once Tony relaxed again, boneless and pliant, did the trickster pull free his hand.

“Nnno, please, _oh fuck what is_ -” He cut off sharply with a high noise, his hips arching helplessly back to try and ease the pressure, or get more of it, or both in different places. The inventor could hardly tell which way was up anymore, and Loki was pushing a toy into him as big as the god’s own cock, but _cold_. “ _Oh fuck, oh g-god_.”

“You are the most wanton creature. You would fuck a monster of ice, wouldn’t you? You would beg for come inside you so cold you could feel it moving in you, marking you?”

“If it feels like this, fuck yes,” Tony whined. “Loki, please, please the rest.”

“Try more clearly, pet.”

“Please push the rest of that toy in me. I-I want to feel like it’s you.”

“Oh pet,” whispered the god, as he pushed the toy slowly in to its flared base. “Oh, your words could break more than your weapons to nothingness.” His free hand pulled Tony’s head back by his hair as began fucking slow and deep as he could, keeping the toy in place with a bit of spell-work long ago carved into the base. “Now let them break you with me, Tony.”

“I ca... can’t––Aaaoufuck _yeah_ ––c-can’t think, Loki, please.”

“You will answer me or I’ll continue your punishment immediately, and you will not come again until its done.” He pinched one of the remaining lash-marks sharply.

Tony’s whole body flinched from still-fresh memory of that pain. He bit back the desire to apologize, trying to focus on his anger again.

“Do you believe that you deserve to live?”

The inventor struggled with that one for a moment. “Y-yes.”

“And are you ashamed of this fact?” Another pinch of a lash-mark, just a warning.

“Yes!” Tony yelped out, hopelessly sincere. He sobbed as he felt filled up still deeper than before, both Loki and the colder toy pushing into his insides and holding him wide open, stretched almost, but not quite, to breaking.

Hissing in his ear, moving only the toy then, Loki asked, “Yet in your pleasure, you are shameless, save for here. You want to suffer to feel worthy of living, and yet you feel guilt that you take pleasure from the pain that should hurt you, oh my poor pet. You should not ever feel undeserving of your existence. Any other might have been more dutiful, but you are work of art, drawn all in shades of fire and blood.”

Tony was close suddenly, the praise melting the last of his resistance from him. He wanted to thank his god for it, for the suddenly mind-melting pleasure and the absurd lightness in his chest both, but his words came out as needy syllables barely resembling language.

“You will ride the cock of a god of chaos for your own pleasure because you would defy the expectations of others. Surely you can handle life itself a few rounds before you give up.”

“I don’t give up.”

“Why-ever not?” Loki asked, teasing.

“Self-worth isn’t all ‘s cracked up to be.” He moaned again, words run out as the trickster began fucking him again, with less deliberation and grace.

“Pride then,” the god murmured. “Pride enough for spite.”

“Defiance. If they think they can damn me, wait ‘til they see how much better I am at doing it myself.” He tried to grin, but was interrupted by a hand stroking his cock making his vision blur, it felt so good. “Loki!”

“Come,” the god rasped, a command and an announcement both, as he fell over the edge and rode Tony through his own release both, until they were both shuddering.

Tony’s mind was a perfect blank, for a few long minutes. He felt his remaining wounds healed one by one: light, almost reverent touches, and sweeps of gentle spells which cleaned away blood, too. There were bruises, too, but the inventor reached out to grab Loki’s wrist before he even realized what he was doing, when the god examined one at his waist, where the god’s hand had left bruising easily mistaken for something made by battle, rather than sex. He was even battered enough that Pepper would easily believe it. It was the perfect opportunity.

“Leave that one, please?”

The trickster appeared surprised, very deeply.

Tony only grinned. “I like it. Let me keep it.”

“Very well.”

But it was the convenience of it. At first.

Until Tony had seen it in the mirror the next morning and become instantly hard as a rock. He has also been a bit strangely relieved that, no really, his own imagination was not actually responsible for his fucked-up ( _heh, literally_ ) dream life, but mostly, seeing the mark again brought back the feel of Loki’s grip in his memory, how it had hurt so sweetly...

So then, yes, it became a problem.

~~

By month six, it had actually gotten to the point that Tony would ask for things while in dreams that he might all sort of regret severely the next day, and for the next several days after. Things like the bite mark high up on his inner thigh that only just healed in time for his girlfriend to be due back from her most recent international trip last time. Another example might be a certain acute soreness that made sitting down less comfortable, but the constant reminder had been––an experience.

It didn’t help that Loki was greedy, and an enabler.

Now Pepper had been out of town for weeks, and he couldn’t help but feel like it was purely to escape him this time; she had taken every travel opportunity possibly the past couple of months. He wondered if she was trying to figure out if she genuinely wanted them to part ways more long-term. It made his heart feel cold and hollow as any other machine.

She suspected he might be cheating on her, but didn’t know how, or with whom. JARVIS kept mum about Tony’s sleep habits, such as occasional noises and multiple nocturnal emissions in more rapid succession than any man Tony’s age should be capable of. That sort of thing.

It was hurting his relationship with Pepper. He knew it was.

He just had to figure out how much it would hurt, physically and psychologically knowing the trickster, how much more damage than good it might really do, if he tried to call it off, and stop this... whatever it was.

It was a tangled mess of sex and forgiveness and being methodically taken apart, every single night. The inventor couldn’t remember a time in his life he’d felt more relaxed than after a few weeks of Loki’s unique brand of... medicine? Or was it snake oil? Possibly poison? Magical crack applied via cock?

Whatever it had become, it was... good. It was better for Tony than he’d felt he himself could ever be for Pepper, and that was eating away at him; and yet, Tony hadn’t had a nightmare in the six months since Loki had been fucking him senseless via dreams. He had an almost-normal sleep regimen, even. He was drinking less, because Loki could apparently tell based on dream-land cues, some which Tony still wasn’t adjusted to, whether the inventor had gone to sleep drunk, and after a third night in a row, had put him through a long session bound and gagged with a cock-ring...

It had been fun, but also an endurance trial the likes of which Tony was more than willing to save for very special occasions, to commemorate his next major failure, but the thing about Loki––however inexplicably––was that while he made each of the inventor’s mistakes unforgettable, he also provided... closure. Something Loki had punished him for, he was officially done feeling bad about, because it had been addressed in a timely manner, he felt appropriately shamed for the failure, but in the end he’d still come so hard he couldn’t see, and Loki would unbind him and wash them both up, and let the human select which, if any, injuries he might be attached to that day. Loki called them keepsakes.

Things with Pepper, by contrast, left him scrambling, never sure he’d made up enough for past mistakes, always being left with the inescapable feeling that she would come to her senses and leave at any moment. No one as good as Pepper could stand him much longer, surely.

And that hurt.

That really, really hurt.

Tony didn’t want to sleep, as a result. He tried to avoid it. He consumed twice his usual coffee intake for that hour of night, and played some Acid Bath in the lab, and tried to work through the night.

He passed out at his own worktable an hour into the attempt.

“You did that on purpose,” he said, right off the bat.

“You were avoiding me.”

Tony looked up from where he was hunched over an oversized antique wooden desk, in this dream. Loki sat on the edge of the usual bed, looking pensive and a bit sadly amused as he examined the inventor’s expression. “You too?”

Loki looked gaunt. His hair was a mess of waves and curls intermixed and tossed haphazardly back over his shoulders. He was wearing either Asgardian pajamas or, more likely, whatever they’d assigned him as his official prison uniform. His feet were bare, and one of them was dripping blood on the floor.

“I’m an emotional wreck, just the usual mess with Pepper, but what the fuck happened to _you?_ ”

“There was a... prison break.”

“Wait what?”

“I was not amongst one of the ones freed,” the god assured, “but I have some doubt that I will be here much longer.” He glanced upward, as though at something beyond the dream they were in. “Sorry. I’m... I can distantly hear her funeral. From my cell.” He swallowed thickly, eyes shining far, far too bright for a moment before he either blinked them back, or otherwise hid them.

“Oh. _Shit_.” He didn’t have to ask for clarification. There was only one woman in Asgard the trickster would be so affected by the funeral of. The funeral Loki was apparently not able to attend, so he had tried to escape here.

“I suspect I may be partially at fault, but I may also be trying rather too hard to blame myself again,” Loki said distantly. “I only gave directions to someone orchestrating the aforementioned jail-break.” He shook his head slowly, eyes very far away again. “I should go.”

“Hey, wait.”

The god shot him a weary look that said very loudly that he wanted no pity.

“I still owe you a drink. It’s my dream, works off my memories and all, so let’s go someplace I know serves some of the best cocktails in town. Furthermore, I bet you can come up with a way to make sure I’m not the only one drunk,” Tony offered. “It can be a remote vigil.”

The god stared at him for a long moment. “What is this?”

“Pepper’s been gone three weeks, I suspect she’s been thinking about moving out again altogether, even more than I suspect somebody has infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. so deeply that they’ve grown roots into it and I still can’t track the fuckers, there’s bombings going around from some lunatic calling himself ‘The Mandarin’ like he’s not clearly far from Chinese and he just almost killed one of my oldest friends,” Tony rattled off tonelessly. “This is selfishness because I was hoping to avoid sleeping and overdose on caffeine in my workshop until daylight, but you’ve brought me here, and now the only thing I want more than a really strong drink, is to not be drinking alone, okay?” he sighed. “C’mon.” He snapped his own fingers this time (he’d had a lot of lucid-dreaming practice as a result of this _thing_ they were doing) and suddenly Loki was seated at a familiar bar instead of the bed. Tony was standing behind the bar, because of course he’d picked his own damn bar, in his own remodeled penthouse.

He caught Loki glance around and abruptly recognize the view. “Ah.”

“Yeah, changed a few things.”

“Much improved, without my crater.”

“I considered keeping that, actually. Display glass over it. A little commemorative placard on it, even.”

The trickster shot him a glare.

Tony just grinned, pouring himself some scotch, and something with Metaxa and pomegranate for Loki, on a hunch. They both drained their first drinks far too quickly, and by the time they had finished off the first bottle of scotch they’d decided to split, half an hour later, they were fast approaching totally wasted.

While the inventor got another bottle, Loki curled up on the couch with his long arms and limbs tucked in close so that he took up surprisingly little space. His face, he tucked between the back of the couch and the arm, with a huff, as he heard Tony return, and sit next to him, another bottle in hand.

“She won’t leave, you know.”

“Hmm?”

The god lifted his head, then gave up on the effort and rolled over enough to let his head rest back against the arm of the couch. “Pepper.”

This time Tony was the one looking skeptical and unimpressed.

Rolling his eyes, Loki pointed at various objects around the room, based on their positions and how he considered them to be not-quite-Tony’s-taste: a vase here, a couple of paintings there, the new post-invasion couch-and-chairs setup rather than the improbably long arched couch from before, the salt and pepper shakers on the bar, a white Stark tablet on one of the side-tables, and a bottle of white wine that had been in the refrigerator when he saw Tony open it earlier.

“Okay, okay, enough, although I hadn’t noticed the wine and thank you for reminding me about an anniversary I’d have otherwise probably missed and made all this worse, but what exactly are you getting at, here?”

“If she were thinking about leaving, and had truly spent three weeks considering it, and possibly seeking out such a place, you’ll know she’s found one when more than three of those––not counting the wine––actually vanish. Until then, she still lives here, and considers this place hers. You can also tell by where in the room they are, how pervasive her intention to remain here is. She hasn’t thought it to be otherwise.”

Tony stared at him. “What the fuck, are you Sherlock Holmes now?”

Loki again rolled his eyes. He seemed to do it even more often when drunk. “No, you fool,” he slurred. “This is your dream, and your memory, but the dream itself is within the Astral Plane. I am a dream-walker. I stroll through the Astral Plane a lot, as a result, and the relationships between people, things they value, and the places they put them, all resonate with a certain...” He sighed. “Look, it’s like this.” He then unexpectedly sat up and rested a hand on either side of Tony’s head.

Tony watched everything in the room disconcertingly become like a fractal made out of itself: the original pieces of furniture and other items in the room became tiny pieces, endlessly repeated down and out and entangled with one another and full of strange little paths and arches, like string theory had a love-child with some non-euclidean architecture. “What the fuck am I looking at?”

“A smaller scale version of what I was getting at. All of the items I named, look for them. Try to focus.”

“I’m having trouble identifying anything beyond... okay wow, that wine bottle looks cool like this.”

“Tony. Focus.”

“The only thing clearly in focus around here is you, and you, sirrah, are drunk,” Tony declared firmly, then his expression suddenly changed and he sat up further, looking around slowly. “They’re intertwined. That doesn’t make sense.”

“It all leads back to the girl,” Loki sighed. “And the overall constellation of the intertwined items and ideas is interwoven with you, with your relationship with her, and to this tower. All of the ways they are connected show that you are both feeling insecure, but where you are resigned to the idea of her leaving, she is far from it.”

“You’re saying this ain’t your first rodeo?”

“Pardon?”

“I get it,” Tony said softly. He might even have felt a little humbled.

Loki withdrew his hands, and took the bottle from him. “Good.”

The inventor watched him drink and felt concerned, and worried, and like he wanted to help, but also as though he were utterly powerless to do so. “How do you think it’ll go for you, in Asgard?”

The trickster winced a little, and took another smaller swig before handing the scotch back over into Tony’s waiting hand. “Odin never thought he would lose Frigga. He is old, and he is... possibly losing his grip on reality a bit.” His eyes narrowed. “For my crimes, I should have been made to make amends, by forced labor, until the point of my own death. Either that, or killed by the sword for that spot of regicide a while back, but he was my biological father and king of Jotunnheim, so no one really seems very bothered by it, which is a further sign that things are not as they should be, and something within Asgard herself is rotten, and has been spreading rot for quite a long while. I have no idea what might be at the core of it, and unless I were made king again unexpectedly, I doubt I shall have opportunity to learn, at this rate.”

“You think he’d kill you?”

“He wanted to. Frigga stopped him, apparently, and was forbidden from ever seeing me again as a result.”

Tony made a face. “Damn.”

“Oh yes,” Loki murmured, accepting the proffered bottle, and taking another gulp. “Furthermore, Dark Elves are involved despite the fact they should have enough decency to _stay extinct_ , their apocalyptic weapon known as the Aether seems to be being talked about too loudly by the many people who habitually spread gossip about all conversations Thor has in public (a habit of which more than half the royal guard is guilty) and if I’m not mistaken, it’s being kept in Asgard... and that sets us up for being attacked by them again, which Odin will be thrilled by, and Thor will be against I think. He will try to run, and I am the only runner available to him who can travel between realms without the bïfrost.” He shrugged. “I have no idea what exactly he has planned, after the running part, but we shall see.”

“Sounds like a mess. Oh, I never asked, why did you deliberately fail the whole invasion, exactly?”

The trickster went very still. “What?”

“I noticed, that day. Didn’t come up again, but I was thinking that if you escaped whoever was on the other side of that portal mostly intact, you’ve already proven capable of doing the impossible, by means of the improbable, and coming out alive despite the odds, at least.” He then realized the god was staring at him. “What?”

“You knew.”

“Doesn’t everyone, by now?”

“No. Only you, and I. No one else even asked, they all just assumed I really meant to be king here,” he said slowly.

Tony blinked. “But you opened the portal where we _could reach_ it, while it was still letting things through. Instead of, you know, amassing somewhere outside the atmosphere and cruising the last few miles before coming in for a landing and invasion tail-gating party of world domination.”

Loki gestured at him urgently. “Precisely! Or there’s simply the north pole.”

“Argh, that’s what Banner said, don’t tell me that was your backup plan.”

“My backup plan was to be killed by either your Hulk or my brother, to escape Thanos and take my chances with reincarnation since my name is no longer written in the book of––” he stopped, seeing Tony look a bit stricken. “What?”

“ _Death_ was the backup plan?”

“Well, not exactly, no. That was just if the portal opened too wide and the armada ships were able to get through after all.”

“Oooh, okay, I saw those, and I concede that you have a point.”

“You... saw them?

“Yeah. Right before I delivered unto them the bomb, and all.”

Loki stared almost through him. “I’m so sorry.”

A flash of screaming nightmares and unspeakable horrors from within a churning, hissing void between worlds flickered briefly across his mind’s eye. “I don’t imagine your longer stay was exactly more comfortable.”

The god visibly shuddered, and nodded slowly.

“You still didn’t have to murder as many people.”

“I know. I tried to keep children particularly unharmed, but I could not overly exert myself by saving human lives without putting them at risk as potential weapons to be used against me by Thanos and the Other. I had to play that particular as close to the vest as a ribcage. They wanted a world-conquerer, and the world that they wanted to conquer was one of the nine realms of Yggdrasil. I wanted very, very badly to go home to the nine, and I am too selfish not to sacrifice more lives for that than a better god would even consider,” he explained in cold, flat tones. “I played conquerer long enough to fool them, and that was my only intention.”

“Didn’t think much about exit strategy?”

“I had one. I lost it somewhere in the midst of my spine shattering.”

Tony half-smiled. “You deserved it.”

“If either of us got everything we deserve, Tony, we would both be in a lot of pain despite being dead thousands of times over, and yet here we both are,” Loki said softly. “You rebuilding your legacy, myself rotting away under Odin’s.”

The inventor tried to imagine Howard growing old enough to go senile and then shuddered at the resulting thoughts.

“What’s that look?” asked the god.

“Imagining if my own father lived into old age enough to start losing it up here, and realizing he’d probably have weekly poker games with Odin and Fury.”

The trickster giggled at that, actually clutching his side slightly and _giggling_ like mad. It was a good look on him, however short-lived. “Odin would enchant his eye patch to reflect the wrong cards.”

“He wears a _reflective_ eyepatch?”

“Gold, usually. Sometimes silver. Sometimes both.”

“When did you realize you were the only male with any actual taste?”

“... I believe, when I was four, Thor went through a phase wherein he chewed the stalks of young grasses, wherever he could find them growing, no matter how anyone tried to stop him. He found some indoors once, we still know not how, but even that aside, he would just sit there and chew it for ages, and he tried very hard to persuade me that it was a sort of verdant revelation once tried, but I-”

“Totally tried it the second he wasn’t looking.”

“ _You_ are not permitted to guess that,” the inebriated trickster insisted.

“Why not me?”

“You have no siblings.”

“I was raised by the butler who was like my dad’s life-long babysitter except a thousand times more awesome than that sounds,” Tony explained, undeterred. “And you want to talk about a shadow unusurpable, let’s go into the fact he built this company up from nothing, and all I’ve done so far is wreck it a few times since he died. I don’t even get to pretend to be king. I’m the spoiled brat kid, who happened to luck out being born obscenely rich and a genius. _Perpetually._ ”

“So you combat this self-awareness with all that you learned about your own story in need of a re-write, and have put more of yourself into being Iron Man, rather than Tony Stark, because you have more full control over your own legacy, as well as your own most dangerous technology safely out of the reach of your enemies and shareholders alike,” Loki concluded. “Yes, I did notice.”

The inventor felt a bit tingly, when the god looked at him like that. It was a very nice feeling. Tony honestly wasn’t sure what “nice” even was supposed to mean in this context, let alone whether he should trust it. His brow furrowed. “You don’t mind-read?”

“Not beyond the background noise of your dream, which I seem to be unable to hear, suggesting we are in fact both very drunk.”

“Well, yes.”

“How do you...” Loki gestured at him vaguely. “How do you still care?”

“Hmm?”

“About people?”

Tony considered. “I don’t care as much as I play on TV, but my story does: Iron Man’s story. I’m not a good guy. I’m basically a bad guy, deep down, but all of my actual judgement calls when it comes to other people boil down to, ‘well, clearly they’re not me, and if they’re better than Tony Stark at heart, they probably deserve a chance more than I do most days’ and that’s about how it goes.”

A look of pain and something akin to acute self-loathing cracked through Loki’s expression before smoothing out again quickly. He knew that Tony ignored it deliberately, and silently wondered, not for the first time, how this mortal functioned inside, that he could be like this, just in conversation? “That is a wiser lesson than I learned from my own falls, I’m afraid.” He finished off the bottle of scotch and set it aside on the table.

A long pause followed. They were both a bit too drunk to keep proper track of dream-time versus waking-time, so it seemed to lighten slowly, as dawn’s light reached the windows.

“I do not know when I will be able to reach you again, depending upon how these next weeks go,” Loki said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“Just keep alive, right? I like having you around.”

Loki smiled at him a little too sincerely, then, and kissed him almost gently.

~~

Tony snapped awake, startled, in his lab, as Pepper turned on all the lights at once. He groaned and rubbed at his eyes. “ _Pep_.”

“You were actually asleep?” she asked.

“Yeah, I was,” he muttered.

“To be fair, you shouldn’t sleep like that. It’s horrible for your everything.”

“My everything, Ms. Potts?”

“Oh, absolutely,” she assured. “Have good dreams, at least?”

Tony frowned a little. “Not exactly ‘good’ all around, no.” He considered. “It ended well, except that it ended too soon,” he then declared conclusively.

“Sex dream?”

“Not this time, no.”

“... But you thought maybe, toward the end there?” she teased.

Tony’s smile was pained and didn’t quite reach his eyes. _More than that, for once, actually._ “Nah, probably not.” _Because Loki_ timed _that shit, the bastard._ He was never sure how, exactly, Loki did a number of things, but he was getting adept at the requisite pattern-recognition to know when it was a Loki-trick, and not the average coincidence. It wasn’t making him seem any less paranoid, at all, though.

She frowned at him.

He shrugged. “Weird dream.”

Pepper rolled her eyes at him.

He smiled as much in relief as anything else when she actually seemed willing to drop the line of inquiry.

~~

He was significantly less relieved when the Mandarin turned out to be a paid actor, instead of an actual psychopathic villain, several days and a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and bombs later.

After Pepper destroyed Killian days later, and they finished dismantling AIM, and they fixed him so that he no longer needed the reactor after they removed Extremis from her system, their relationship still wasn’t exactly fixed.

She no longer felt as uncomfortable living with him, that much was clear, but there was something in how she looked at him, like she still couldn’t understand why he couldn’t go easier on himself sometimes, or be a bit less offensively reckless and loud whenever possible whether it be with his drinking or his tie-and-sunglasses combinations, and why he would keep being Iron Man and striving to make that a better damn story than the ones in his own nightmares over and over again.

That was the other thing. The nightmares being back.

Not helping anything.

Not even a little.

So when he hacked S.H.I.E.L.D. a bit to find out more about the Greenwich incident and the people involved in and around it, as well as some regional meteorological data, he then successfully found Dr. Jane Foster’s current residence with about two hours’ efforts. It was another fifteen minutes to get her cellphone number and for JARVIS to give him an idea of whether she might be busy or anything; she was in a lab, so probably, but he would risk it.

He called her. She picked up right before the last ring.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Dr. Foster, this is Tony Stark.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, please don’t think that, I need to talk to tall, blond, and sparky if he’s around, that’s all. I just had time to finish catching up on the Greenwich situation.”

“He’s back at my apartment, I think, with Darcy.”

“...”

“Mr. Stark?”

“Found her number. Thanks.”

 _Click_.

 

~~

Leaving Dr. Foster confused as that was probably rude, but Tony was getting a bit worried. _Not worried. That other thing, that means less caring, but more obviously involves lying to himself. Angry? Yes, angry. That’s the one, I think, probably? It’s easier to define, just go with it._

Tony was bad at lying to himself.

Sometimes that caused problems.

On the fourth ring, Darcy Lewis picked up her phone. “Uh, Hello? Who are you and why are you calling?” she rattled off boredly. “Hurry up and explain, because the houseguest I’m hanging out with here is a legit god, so...”

“I’m Tony Stark. Also legitimately a bit of a god.”

“Oh my god!” She audibly dropped the phone, which hit something with a non-fatal-sounding thump, and she scrambled to pick it back up again. “Oh god you still there, Tony?”

“Yeah,” the inventor said, amused. “I’m here. Nice reaction, though. I’m actually calling to ask if you’d mind letting me have a word with Rocky in there.”

“... Sorry, now I’m picturing him in a gold speedo and uhm... mmm, rowr!”

“I know many who would agree with you, but I am not amongst them.”

“Aw, you mean you’re really as straight at they say?” she sounded so devastated.

“I never said _that_.”

“OH MY GOD I KNEW YOU WERE BI! I’m telling people, sorry. Anyway, here’s Thor!” she said sweetly, and handed the phone off.

“Hello?” Thor sounded at an utter loss as to why he had been asked to speak into this device in his hand, which was audibly on Speaker.

“Good! Yeah, you got this. I’m gonna be in here.”

“Thank you, Miss Lewis,” Tony called.

There was a slightly muffled, but still audible, fangirl-squee from the other end.

“Anthony Stark?”

“Hey, big guy. How’s space?”

“Space is... healing, in the wake of the convergence.”

“And so are you, I hear,” Tony said, his tone one he reserved for condolences.

“I... have seen two of my kin lost, yes.”

The inventor felt something very uncomfortable in the region of his entire sternum. “T-two?”

“Yes.”

“I... only heard about the one.” _Please be Odin, please let Odin be the dead one, please, oh please, oh please, my kingdom for a dead Odin._

“Ah. So you did not know of my mother’s passing, as well?”

 _Well, this is awkward._ “Actually, that’s the one that reached the part of S.H.I.E.L.D. I hacked. It might just be incomplete data. Who...”

“It... was Loki. He lost his life valiantly in battle, to save the nine realms, as well as Dr. Foster and myself.”

Tony slid down in his seat slowly, feeling a bit gutted. “Oh. You’re sure?”

The god made a faintly amused sound. “I would doubt it, too, had he not died in my own arms, Anthony. His heart ceased to beat, his lungs ceased to breath, and the soul went out from behind his eyes. He is gone.”

“I’m so sorry,” the inventor said, surprisingly soft. He was having trouble focusing on the words, but that seemed to be the only way that they didn’t sound, to his own ears, like they had been ripped out of him, like they felt. “It was clear how much he meant to you, and no one deserves to lose that, not all at once, especially.”

“Thank you, Anthony. I... did not expect such understanding from you.” He sighed. “Although, in arguments, you fight with words very like my brother.” He then took a breath. “Are you well? I did hear that you were fighting a dragon, of some sort?”

“Uh... more like a terrorist organization that was actually a cover-up for another crazier thing,” Tony corrected lightly. “Almost lost Pepper, until she killed the main guy with the power of pure badass... and also fire. A lot of fire. Lost a...” He hesitated. “Well, I just found out I lost someone I was just getting close to, I thought. Out of the blue.”

“I am sorry to hear that.”

“We’re all messes, is all. Just means more cleaning up to do.” He took a deep breath. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to call you out of the blue and just-”

“It’s fine, Anthony,” the thunder god assured. “It is good to hear you vanquished your foes, in the end. You have brought fond memories of my brother to mind, and my day will be the better for it. Thank you.”

“Thank you, too. For listening. And my condolences.”

“Fare you well.”

“Bye.”

Tony dropped the phone on the nearest flat surface and leaned forward to bury his face in his hands. _It’s got to be a lie. It’s got to be a play, somehow. A game._

_Then why do you keep having nightmares with no sign of him?_

The inventor felt that ugly wrenching sensation in his chest again. He realized it was a sob, except his lungs weren’t getting enough air for it. He wasn’t breathing. He tried to remember how, and after about a minute, managed to suck in a deep breath, then let it out too fast, and took another.

_Hey, Loki. You okay? You alive?_

He felt ridiculous for even thinking it.

It was ridiculous. He was an atheist. Praying to a pagan god who was probably dead for real this time. Proving something to Thor, or maybe he’d chosen the exact wrong moment to stop being evil enough to take Tony’s advice but the one on the line was Thor, and how could Loki...

Loki would see Thor as more worthy. He knew that, down to his own bones, Tony knew that much, and it _hurt_.

Pepper found him later that night almost insensible on the couch, bottles littering the floor around him, and threatened him with injury from her stiletto heels if he didn’t get his sorry ass to bed. Somehow, Tony made it there, and sunk down and curled up, and by the time Pepper was herself ready for bed, and got a better look at his face, she realized it was a bit serious.

“Tony?”

He met her gaze.

“You okay? Did something happen?”

“Friend died. You didn’t meet him, but he... I really liked him around,” he said.

“Oh, Tony, oh my god, I’m so sorry.”

He let her pull him into an embrace and clung a bit more than he usually would let himself, because if he lost her too, he was pretty sure he would be dead within three days, and he wasn’t done yet.

He wasn’t _done_.

~~

He didn’t lose Pepper. Platonically.

It took another six months of personal growth and shifting priorities for them both before they could admit they were having trouble. It took them another three months after that to admit that their problems couldn’t be fixed, either.

After a few weeks in relationship counseling, they amicably split.

It was a marvelously peaceful thing Tony was still stunned hadn’t exploded his face off when it happened.

It was during the last three months of his relationship with Pepper that Tony had finally done his own research and guided learning for lucid-dreaming, instead of just what he managed to learn from Loki. He had started figuring out how to shut off his own nightmares, or at least fast-forward through some events, or even just change the channel to another dream, with a bit more effort.

He also noticed a thing. It was an odd thing.

It was so odd, in fact, that he called a sorcerer about it and made an appointment. Two days later, he was having his head prodded by Dr. Strange.

“There’s something here, and it’s alive.”

“Those are two wildly discouraging things to hear, Doc.”

“By ‘alive’ I mean that it’s still connected to the one who cast it. This is not a young connection either.”

Tony felt his heart sink. He had really just been hoping the four runes showing up on the edge of his vision in dreams were somehow harmless. “So it’s covered in dust from lack of use, or what?”

“It has not _that_ neglected, no. Otherwise, it would be deteriorated by now.”

“... If it wasn’t at all active, like say if the caster died or something, how fast would it deteriorate?”

“Well, if the caster died, so would this connection. The original seal, on your throat, is where it’s anchored.”

“My throat.” He remembered hands around his neck many, many times. It took a bit of time to think all the way back to the very first occasion. His mouth went dry. “That little fucker is alive!”

“What?”

“Nothing, just... why were you even looking at my neck? I told you I was seeing a thing on the astral plane like up around here.” He gestured out to his left at the edge of his own peripheral vision. “Not my neck.”

“There was a minor thread coming down from... Oh my, no you’re quite right, that’s far more complex than I thought.” The sorcerer sounded a little breathless. “This is a marvel,” he said, after a long moment. “It’s reality litmus paper.”

“What?”

“It’s only visible to you when everything else around it in your vision is false, such as a dream or if you were being psychologically manipulated to see things.”

“That’s cool, but I’m still going to strangle him.”

“Loki?”

Tony nearly fell out of the chair he had been trying to indignantly arise from. “What the fuck... Who the... How the fuck? Strange, what did you just say?”

“Nice save,” the sorcerer deadpanned, unimpressed and clearly unconvinced by Tony’s attempts to appear unaware. “That’s what those runes spell. I can read them, you see, because that’s a thing I do, but was Loki not a villain last I heard?”

“Well, yes, but it’s complicated.”

“How is it complicated?”

 _The only thing I want more than to strangle him right now, is to strip him naked and jump on his cock_ , was probably not an appropriate answer, Tony decided. He still almost said it, but instead went with, “Well, because I’m kind of broken.”

Strange snorted, amused. “ _I_ could’ve told you that.”

“Can it. Fuck you and your witchcraft, you Vincent Price fanboy, I’m going to Asgard to kick someone in the throat.”

He was followed out by the the sound of Strange laughing at him. Par for the course, really, with that one.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A glimpse of Loki's version of events, followed by Tony Stark's arrival in Asgard just a couple days after he's found out Loki is still alive. Feels ensue.

Boredom had long ago proven to be the only form of punishment that actually affected Loki, even difficult though it often was to achieve, due to how good the trickster was at keeping himself entertained. His imprisonment, after the invasion of New York City, was all-too-successful at giving him too much luxury, and not enough of substance to otherwise occupy his mind.

Without anything to relieve the monotony, it might just do the trick where other attempts to train him to be a good and tame little Aesir pup like all of the others had failed, in the past.

Pain would be easy to deal with. It was inescapable and all-consuming. Loki could have let it roll over him yet again, and retreated deep within his own mind, practiced as he was after so many millennia pursuing mage-craft and knowledge and mischief all, as well as fighting alongside the likes of Thor. He could retreat so deeply that words no longer reached him, if he needed to. He had needed to, with Thanos.

The Mad Titan had eventually learned the same lesson that, over time, all of Asgard had learned long before: that it was too much effort to break the will of Loki Lie-smith if the goal was to make him _useful_ , because his body and mind alike would have to be torn into in ways which would make him fundamentally useless, if not dead, before his will would ever truly break. People only ever wanted Loki for his usefulness, so the break-his-will-to-make-him-harmless plans were usually abandoned in favor of alternatives (such as the links between Loki's mind and the scepter he had wielded) or, more usually, his tormentors simply deceived themselves into believing him more broken by their torments than he actually was, a deception Loki was often more than happy to help along.

The only other options were to threaten those he cared about (unlikely, because they tended to be more than capable of protecting themselves) or deprive him of stimuli of any interesting sort for so long that his mind eventually broke itself. Thanos hadn't been that patient, luckily enough.

Odin, however... Odin knew that he had plenty of time.

Loki had been well and truly caught, and he resented it deeply.

Of course, he spent the first day testing the limitations of his magic under the restraining wards of the cage: those formed by the transparent walls and others, deeper and intended to restrain him from more indirect methods of escape such as astral projection. None of it could prevent his dream-walking, of course. Nor could all of his connections to the astral plane be cut off, but the spells caging him did prevent him from being able to gather enough power to do anything much with the connections that he still had left.

He could touch upon some of the most recent spells he had cast, even reach out to them, and where their seals were located, but his magic had been drained to nothing by his arrival on Earth via the tesseract, and he had not cast very many spells beyond simple illusions, forced to rely more upon Thanos' scepter as he had been.

Save for one notable exception.

The anomalously mind-control-resistant mortal. Loki had been interested in learning about that resistance very much for his own purposes. A way to repel the hold of the scepter would have saved him a lot of trouble, if he had only possessed such means far earlier.

He couldn't alter the spell, to his frustration. He barely managed to get the information from it that it had been designed to gather in the first place, but it had all proven unhelpful. The mortal's heart was in a precarious position, his soul was more than a little rough around the edges, his mind was very sharp, his blood was entirely human with no anomalies, he had a potential gift for magic but it was deeply buried as it often tended to be with mortals and had clearly never so much as been looked for, until Loki's spell had checked.

Nothing about the mortal should have allowed this.

Loki had to conclude that it had been the strange light from the human's chest, which had sounded rather metallic when prodded. He knew it contained an electromagnet; his spell's mapping of the mortal's physical condition had made it clear why such was needed, in fact. All of that metal, in such tiny pieces...

The magnet hadn't deflected it. Something else about the device and how it powered itself must have been to blame.

Unless, of course, something had been missed, but to find that out would require a closer look at the mortal. He could attempt that via dream-walking, but he wouldn't be able to get any new readings on the man's physical body, let alone a separate inanimate and inorganic object such as the implant in Stark’s chest.

It had been an _appreciable_ body, for a mortal. Compact, practical, muscular without being so defined as to be reminiscent of the Aesir warrior ideal, scarred from work forging light and power out of darkness and whatever resources happened to be on-hand. Of all the mortals Loki had seen on his last visit to Midgard, Tony Stark had looked the most mage-like. He had the same hunger in his stare, the same perpetual dissatisfaction and refusal to accept anything in the world at face-value alone.

Loki had admired all of that, while mocking him, and playing his game. The way the inventor had watched him...

It had been a long time since the trickster had found an audience able to keep up with even just his words themselves, let alone see past them into the rest of his performance. It had been even longer (unless one counted Frigga, but she being his mother had far too much time to learn his habits and the twists of his mind to lack an unfair advantage) since he had an audience who so keenly saw through the performance itself, and seemed to grasp some of what lay beyond it all-too-clearly.

The paths between Midgard and Asgard, along the astral plane, were terribly long and troublesome, though. Would it even be worth the attempt? Surely the guards would notice, after his second day comatose by the time he actually reached the mortal’s dreams, that he was clearly up to no good.

Unless there was another way...

The nature of travel in the Astral Plane tended to be more associative and potentially abstract, after all, compared to travel through physical, rather than metaphysical, realities. If Loki could reach out with his mind and touch the seal he had left upon the mortal’s body in the physical realm, with effort, surely there must be enough of a similar connection to exploit in the Astral Plane.

He still dismissed the idea as pathetic.

After all, look what those ridiculous mortals had done to _Thor_.

Loki wasn’t at all certain that he wanted to know what such strange conquerors as the human race might do to the likes of him. Clearly, like himself, they did not conduct war-like actions in strictly honorable terms.

Not that Loki considered himself susceptible to such sentimentally indulgent temptations. He had been burned far too many times by a number of truly brilliant people in his own long history, with a few outliers who still had his love, like Angrboða, but would not ever again have his whole heart, however sadly.

No. Humans could be no worse than all of the others. They were only strange outliers at all because of the brevity of their life-spans compared to the other races in the nine realms. Surely.

People had tried to tell Loki before that humanity had long ago mastered the arts of the unconventional, the unexpected, and another set of qualities more difficult to describe in concrete terms: a knack for sinking hooks into the very hearts of others. The trickster had found that amusing, long ago, when he had been very young, for people had said the same of him, for a time, before he became more selective in his tastes, when it came to lovers.

On the few occasions that he had mustered sufficient magic to spy on his brother even briefly, he had caught glimpses of the woman in some of Thor’s surface thoughts––the way he thought of her, and how surprisingly it seemed to be her mind and quick intellect that so captivated him––Loki admitted, if only privately to himself, that he had a nagging, infinitesimally small scrap of self-doubt in him, which suggested that perhaps a human like Tony Stark might be a true threat to him, if allowed too close.

He eventually dismissed it out of pride and strode right into the mad inventor’s dreams regardless, of course. He was, after all, _Loki_. The potential for chaos sang too sweetly to him, for it to be ignorable for very long.

 

~~

 

He had expected to arrive, mock a hero for a while, and simply play for time, while quietly attempting to use very small amounts of magic to reach out past Tony’s dreamscape into physical reality to further examine the power-source in Tony Stark’s chest.

“ _Hello, Mr. Stark._ ”

The inventor set down his drink slowly, turned away from the bar, and then jerked back slightly in dismay as soon as he caught sight of Loki, but the man's feet seemed rooted in the floor suddenly.  “Wow, you are standing way too close.”

“This is a dream, Stark.”

“Then use my first name, and why are you still wearing pants?”

 _A joke?_ Loki thought, for this mortal clearly relied on his dry wit often, but this particular statement was just a bit lascivious, and the way the mortal eyed his armor––as though disappointed by its determinedly staying in place and covering him up––suggested he still hadn’t gotten that this was not one of Tony’s more usual, run-of-the-mill dreams. The implications behind that...

The trickster had managed to merely raise an eyebrow in response, and cajole salaciously, “Do you dream of me naked very often, or is this a special occasion I should be aware of?” He might have given Tony a once-over, from head-to-toe, and realized that perhaps there were other ways his boredom might find relief, here.

“Actually, I more usually have a lot of nightmares, and about eighty percent of them I can blame you for, because that invasion farce was some serious bullshit, and didn’t we ship you back home in chains yesterday? What are you doing dream-walking this far already? Thor said it’d take you longer.”

“I left a spell about your person when I grabbed you by the throat, so that I would be able to further research your _unique resistance_.” He tapped the center of the arc reactor sharply. “It links me to you in a manner too harmless to be negated by my prison, and makes you much easier to walk to by a shorter route than my usual ones on the Astral Plane.”

“Ah. So this is actually you,” Tony said slowly, realization dawning.

“You’re not disappointed.”

“Correct. Yeah. More disconcerted, and a little confused. Why talk to me? Why not just take the data collected by your little tracker-spell and fuck off?”

“Results were inconclusive and I’ve read the only two books in my cell eight times already, Stark. I am a creature easily bored, as I believe you can well understand, being that you are as well,” Loki purred. "I did hope, upon finding my connection to this spell still intact, that you might aid in the alleviation of that intense boredom, but I had not imagined you might be so inclined. What did you prefer? Seeing me chained, or when I asked you _kneel_?"

The inventor’s complexion, over his entire face got slightly more pink. His pupils dilated, and when Loki glanced down, the human’s knees locked like it was the only way they would stay unbent and _oh_. _Oh dear._

Suddenly the trickster’s focus narrowed exclusively to observing the inventor’s reactions to him, examining every hint of resistance-to-temptation in Tony’s demeanor and expression, and found... much.

“Kneeling, then. Oh _good_.”

“You’re here because you’re _bored_. That’s really it? Seriously?” The sputtering attempt at deflection was at least brief.

"And you seem to consider my nudity the stuff of your dreams,” Loki mused, low and bleakly mocking, but not uninterested.

“I’m in a stable relationship with a woman I respect, no offense.”

The denial was half-hearted, for one, and irritating, for another, now that the trickster was more than a little interested. If he were honest with himself, he was more hungry for this than he had realized until a few moments ago, but now that he had been made so aware of it, he _wanted._ He craved. He needed an outlet like this.

He needed it more than he could have known, until right then, staring into the eyes of the most intriguing, tempting, and captivatingly intelligent new audience he’d been presented with in centuries. An audience who wanted him, and wanted to be broken by him in very particular ways.

 _Oh yesss_.

Thus, Loki pinned the inventor against the bar with one hand and leaned in close to hiss into his ear: “This is _just a dream_ , Anthony.” The statement might have sounded cool, reassuring, even playful-sounding, if not for the predatory, wickedly sharp edge to both his tone and the implications of his words. _Cheat then. I will give what she never could_. The god didn’t even realize how much of a problem this was, until he found his words moving ahead without his permission, making... concessions of all things. “I won’t even leave marks for her to find... unless you ask me to.” He trailed two long fingers up the line of the inventor’s jaw as he said it. Trying to reign in his own need before it became too obvious, too exploitable, he focused instead on the inventor’s reactions again. They were, after all, gorgeous. “You’re so nervous, despite all of your infamous experience for being quite promiscuous. Why is that, I wonder? Your heart flutters so very fast, perhaps she’ll believe you to be having a nightmare.” He smiled wolfish and bitter, but not jealous, strangely. The famous Pepper Potts did not appeal to Tony in the same ways that Loki did, clearly enough; she appealed to his heart. The trickster appealed to much, much worse. Still, he wanted to know how afraid the inventor was of discovery, and how arousing that fear might feel to them both. “Does she sleep beside you?”

“N-not tonight,” Tony managed to say. “She’s in Prague. Some... conference.” He sucked in a breath sharply at the flick of the god’s devilish tongue against the lobe of his ear. “Look, I still haven’t agreed to this,” he insisted.

“Hence why I’m not touching your erection until you beg me for release.” He glanced down pointedly at the evidence in question.

Tony then sucked in a breath and made a very soft, low noise in his throat.

Loki grinned, for that was when he knew that he had won.

And the inventor, his prize, gave himself up so very gorgeously.

 

~~

 

Upon waking from that encounter, Loki proceeded to slap his own forehead with his palm sharply for his own unforgivable failures in the foresight department. His own capacity for scheming hadn’t been so successfully undermined by his own libido since the first time Angrboða had successfully seduced both himself and Sigyn.

To be fair, on both occasions this had happened to him, the sex had been frankly mind-blowing and his chronic inability to cling to regretting his own poor decision-making, when being proud of his own exploits in the wake of such a bad decision was an option instead, made the sting to his pride fade quickly.

Also, he was self-aware enough to know that, in the wake of his experiences shortly before, and long after, falling from the bïfrost, his need for... that particular brand of release... was unsurprising. So perhaps, while he was trapped in this cage with nothing to do anyway, he could continue this, and heal in ways that the darling inventor never need know about.

It wasn’t as though he were attaching himself to Tony Stark; he had, in fact, provided them both with a very secure degree of separation: only in dreams would this happen, and only for a while. The man would be his possession, sexually, in only those very particular terms. Loki was glad he had maintained that much clarity of thought by that point in the conversation, in retrospect.

He had not expected the mortal to want him so. To touch him so. To be so untouched, and unclaimed, despite his reputation for being highly promiscuous, experienced, and skilled in matters sexual. It had been intoxicating.

Just thinking about it, Loki could recall that exquisite mouth on each of his fingers, giving them all detailed, individual attentions, with a devout fascination the trickster almost hadn’t recognized until Tony had smirked at him so knowingly, with such longing and pleasure both, to have found a way to deeply affect him.

The human inventor, clearly, had a streak of innovation and hunger for knowledge and experience that would rival any mage worth their mettle.

And he had been studying _Loki_ the way that the god of lies himself studied _magic_ and it had made Loki’s breath grow ragged.

The reminiscence had some side-effects of course.

Glancing down at his own erection, Loki considered talking himself down rather than taking himself in hand, as some of his partners in relationships of this sort had preferred, in the past; but that would suggest he himself was Tony Stark’s object as much as the inventor was his.

That certainly was not the case, according to Loki’s pride.

The rest of him, disconcertingly, seemed to be keeping mum on the whole topic.

Just to spite his own hesitation, Loki slid his fingers down to unfasten and open his trousers to alleviate some of the pressure on his cock. Only then did he project an illusion of himself in the corner reading one of his books.

Teasing the Royal Guard, after all, was one of his fondest childhood pastimes, and one which he did still occasionally indulge in. If he hadn’t done it in this situation, he would’ve only regretted it, Loki was certain.

Stroking himself leisurely, he began to think about his plans for what to do in another dozen or so hours, when he visited his mortal toy’s dreams again.

He would have to get the man to kneel before him again, this time to worship his cock, because while Tony might not have been with many other men, he clearly only had a gag reflex when he wanted to, and his tongue was very naturally talented. Since the inventor was so responsive to Loki’s voice, as well, the trickster could tell him in detail about what he was doing, and what he would be doing for the rest of the night, while that mouth worked him, and make Tony moan around his cock again.

Oh yes, this could be an excellent means to keep boredom from driving him mad, in here. Furthermore, this gave him excellent ammunition against Thor’s pride, sure to drive him into a righteous frenzy of condemnation, for what Loki had done to his shield-brother, and fellow Avenger.

The thought made the god’s arousal wane slightly, as thoughts of Thor tended to, but that was quickly remedied by recalling Tony Stark’s voice as the inventor had his asshole teased by clever fingers, for the first time with _such intent_.

He recalled exactly how the human genius’ voice trembled just slightly whenever he uttered the unfamiliar phrase _my god_.

With that, Loki was undone, for the time being, content to languorously ride out his climax and let it take its sweet time, sweet and intense until he had to stop in order to recall how to breathe again.

He resolved, then, to regret nothing about this.

 

~~

 

The problem, Loki discovered by the second month of their torrid affairs, with dominating a creature like Tony Stark, was that it required getting deep into the inventor’s own head, and the rewards for doing so were exquisitely beautiful. Every. Last. One.

It all came back to one of his first questions he had asked of the inventor, once it had become clear that Tony couldn’t prevent himself from being aroused by Loki’s presence, words, and demeanor, that first night: _what did you ever ask them to punish you for?_

_Uh... I usually just, uhm, made something up._

It had been clear, then, to Loki, that this mortal wanted for punishment, for control, to keep him from becoming monstrous and spoiled and awful as he was shamelessly capable of being, at his very worst. Quite the opposite of the trickster himself, who had been spoiled early, but then chastised, punished, bullied, or attacked by small gangs of Aesir warriors who considered him a black mark upon the otherwise pristine House of Odin, over the years, whenever he had tried to act out in similar ways. Or, on one memorable occasion, he had his lips sewn shut. The usual, for one such as Loki, in a place like Asgard.

The trickster’s own personal experiences had led him to develop particular responses to pain and abuse: he shut down and retreated inward, and any who dared follow him usually wound up badly burned. Trying to force one’s way into the mind of Loki Lie-smith was not unlike trying to invade Russia, in that regard, not that the god himself yet knew that.

Tony Stark did something rather more stunning, with pain.

He transmuted it into pleasure, and begged for more.

What greater defiance could there be, in the face of grueling punishment, and pain, than to get off on the pain, to enjoy it thoroughly, basely, and without shame, pleading for more as though it were the greatest of rewards in all the realms?

Being so incapable of such things himself, Loki had always been fascinated by this tendency in others. Tony Stark wasn’t the first to submit himself to the trickster’s brand of moderate sexual sadism, but he was the most...

By the Norns, this human was the most exquisitely self-aware, clever, and deviously disobedient creature, when he wanted punishment. He was clearly learning Loki as well as the god was learning him, and it was maddeningly glorious.

“You deliberately cut our time short, Tony.”

“Y-yes.”

“You set an alarm on your own technology to mimic the Avengers alert systems, and thought I wouldn’t notice?”

“No, my god.” He glanced up nervously, then, to judge how much trouble he had successfully got himself into, by watching closely how Loki responded to being called that. He then bit his lower lip and shivered a little to see the god continuing to loom over him, unmoving and disapproving and shrewd.

He hadn’t seen Loki like this.

He also hadn’t ever cut off their sessions together without an outside force such as the Avengers genuinely being to blame. Loki had been very close to coming, when that alarm had gone off and the dream too-abruptly broke apart before the trickster could stop it.

The god had then spent _hours_ contemplating how to make this mortal sorry for that, and he intended to apply his favorite particular methods.

“Of course, not. You knew I would notice.” He trailed his fingertips up the left side of Tony’s face, from jawline to cheekbone, just shy of the man’s eye. “You wished for me to punish you still more severely, didn’t you?”

“You do it so well,” Tony responded.

Loki turned him around swiftly and slapped his ass hard enough to badly bruise, making the inventor’s knees nearly buckle and a moan escape him. “She has returned from her trip, has she not?”

The inventor’s breathing quickened at mention of Pepper, but he remained otherwise very conspicuously quiet.

“So she _has_ ,” Loki murmured, and slapped the other cheek, just as hard.

“Yes!” It was a reluctant scream, this time.

“Address me properly, pet.” Another smack, to the first cheek.

Tony emitted a cry of pain, then said more shakily, “Y-yes, my god, she’s in my bed t-tonight.”

The god then leaned in to whisper against the back of his pet’s ear: “I can make you sleep-walk, you know.”

The inventor went stock-still.

“I could even make you half-aware of it.”

“Please don’t touch her,” Tony asked, low and desperate. “Don’t make me end you, because I will. I’ll find a way or I’ll make one, if you even _dare_ -”

“I mean her no harm, pet, I promise you that,” Loki interrupted, reaching about to wrap one hand around the inventor’s throat firmly, tipping Tony’s head back. “For one, she has not offended me. For another, I would not even have you touch her, no, not while you’re _here_. Not while you are _mine_ to appreciate.” He chuckled softly, pressing against his pet’s back. “No, but she could be a witness, possibly. Even the smallest glimpse would startle her, certainly.”

The inventor’s breath audibly caught in his throat.

Loki squeezed just enough to keep it there. “You have handcuffs in your quarters. I could make you fetch them.” Then he let go and smiled against Tony’s shoulder as the inventor gasped.

The scenery around them began to change, and it required pulling from Tony’s memory, which willingly provided them both with a new setting: the exquisitely decadent, yet modern bathroom belonging to Tony’s own penthouse in Avengers tower.

Banishing the inventor’s clothes, and all of his own save for his trousers, Loki summoned cuffs and guided his pet into the oversized shower. There were hand-holds in there more usually installed for the convenience of handicapped persons, but Tony had installed them deliberately to facilitate more raunchy shower sex, more than any other reasons. Now he was handcuffed to the one located highest up on the wall, which was improbable for any practical and non-deviant use, but which Pepper liked to seize hold of while Tony held her pressed against the wall, both of them directly under the spray of the shower. This time, Tony was facing the wall, his back to Loki.

“What would she think of you, if she found you like this?” hissed the god.

Tony whimpered, the thought filling him with dread and horror, and yet not making his erection any less painful. “P-please, Loki, don’t.”

“Oh, it could be worse.”

The inventor shuddered, then gasped as Loki turned on the hot water, just shy of painfully hot, and turned Tony around to face the spray so that it ran down his chest and over his cock, making him tremble at the far-too-teasing, gentle stimulation, while the god of lies threatened to make the far-less-broken, sexy, yet dignified and poised Pepper Potts find him like _this_.

“What would she think, seeing you so helplessly turned on and debased and ready to beg for a cock in to open you up from the inside,” Loki purred. “She would be _worried_ , at first, would she not?”

Tony nodded, unable to find words, panting with anticipation as he was, and then suddenly screamed––bathroom acoustics making the sound louder than usual, and reflecting more of it back at him, so he could really hear himself––when a riding crop suddenly appeared in Loki’s hand an created a very sharp, precise welt just beneath the arc reactor in Tony’s chest.

“I asked you a question, pet.”

“Y-yes, she would be worried,” the inventor choked out.

“She would worry because of how you look, here, Iron Man. Why would a hero like you be so broken as to do this to yourself?” the god crooned, trailing the end of the riding crop down Tony’s chest slowly, stopping just above the base of his cock.

“Because I like it,” Tony rasped.

“Can you imagine how she would look at you, should you tell her this? How would she look, Tony?”

The inventor’s chest contracted with a sob. “D-disappointed. More worried. She’d ask m-me to please stop doing this.”

“Would you? If she so asked?” Loki leaned in just enough to lick one of the inventor’s nipples, firm and velvet under his tongue.

“I would lie,” Tony confessed, in a wrecked whisper, “I don’t think I could stop m-myself, and it’s terrifying, but I don’t want you to sop. Please don’t stop.”

“Oh, but you have been terribly bad, pet. I must punish you.”

The inventor gulped tightly. “Please?”

Loki smirked at him, and began to step back.

“No _don’t leave!_ ” his pet gasped, eyes suddenly brighter with tears, both the desperation in his voice and the clash of metal as he tried to launch himself forward only to be held back by his bonds forming an unexpectedly violent cacophony.

The trickster was a bit caught off-guard by it. He had intended to stand just outside the door, more than close enough that there would be no danger, but enough to be out of his pet’s sight, just long enough to leave Tony there awhile, teased under the flow of water and wondering when his god would return and finish him off, but it was suddenly clear as day, to Loki, that if he left even just so far as that, Tony wouldn’t believe he would come back at all, ever.

The realization struck a chord in him that he didn’t want to examine too closely, but he was inspired by it. He summoned a chair for himself, left the glass shower’s fully transparent door wide open, for optimal viewing, and sat down, watching. Waiting.

Tony relaxed considerably, even as his brow creased deeply with confusion and frustration as he struggled a bit further, and whimpered a little. Eventually he looked away from Loki’s eyes, too embarrassed to keep staring into them, but he could still feel the trickster’s attention fixed on him, judging by how he squirmed, and kept sneaking glances out of the corner of his eye. Then he seemed to notice something in particular and frowned, staring at Loki’s crotch.

The god wasn’t hard, now. Or didn’t seem to be.

Illusions could work such wonder, after all.

The inventor then met his eye again, with a determined sort of look.

“You may not turn,” Loki commanded.

“Yes, my god,” Tony said, low and sweet, like he only wanted to please.

It was false. The god much preferred his pet to sound more raw and rough and _desperately_ sincere. This was too cordial for them. Loki continued to wait.

“C-can I do something? Anything? _Please?_ ”

“Show me your creativity, pet.”

The inventor leaned back against the wall, muscles in his arms flexing as he pressed his ass back against the tile firmly, the water and his own sweat making his skin slick, so that the pressure was enough to push his cheeks apart. Then he took a half-step to one side, where another of the grip-bars was located just a little higher up than Tony’s asshole normally resided, when he stood normally. The grip-bar was vertical, and the inventor discovered, as he’d thought, that standing on his toes and pulling himself up via the cuffs, he could apply pressure between the cheeks of his ass, cold metal right against the tender places between. He slid up along it as best he could, then slowly back down, teeth dragging across his lower lip with both the strain of the exercise, and the pleasure.

Then he looked again at Loki, who continued to maintain the illusion that he wasn’t hard as a rock. In truth, the trickster was using all of his remaining willpower to remain seated, and stop from touching himself.

Tony’s brow furrowed more deeply and he let his head tip back as he began to rub himself up and down the smooth metal bar, imagining it was something the god was using on him. He moaned Loki’s name tremulously, unthinking this time, unguarded, as his movements became more desperate, because this wasn’t enough. He needed more. Anything more. He began to sob with it, even as his hips moved faster, distressed and needing and wanton, rocking his whole body into the motions.

Looking at the god again, he collapsed entirely, hanging limp from his restraints, legs not even trying to support him, upon seeing the god still apparently so unaffected. “I’m sorry,” he whined. “I’m so sorry, Loki, please don’t leave me like this. Please don’t make her see me like this, _please_.”

The water became hotter, and the shower head turned to hit him a bit more directly. Tony screamed Loki’s name like a prayer of acute supplication, and turned his face away from it, trying to get his legs under him again, but stopped when the god demanded, “Do not stand. Remain as you are.”

Whimpering at the sting of water not hot enough to damage his skin, but just the right temperature to be too hot to quite adjust to _especially in certain very special places_ that were rock-hard and leaking pre-come even then, despite the pain, Tony let his head hang forward, his eyes falling shut right as he waited for his next instruction.

Shaking and crying silently under all of the heat, Tony waited almost five minutes before he began begging again, his voice barely seeming to cooperate with him anymore, cracking almost like a teenager’s.

Then the water turned cold and Tony gasped and writhed back, then further into it even as his whole body shuddered, for it soothed the pain of the heat, but his skin puckered with goosebumps and his muscles jerked painfully at how it ached almost to his bones, the more that poured down over him.

It did shrink his hard-on to half-mast, however, and he tried to curl his body forward to shield it with minimal success, whining and gasping.

Then the water suddenly stopped, and he was just hanging there, dripping wet.

“As far as you know, I might have lied about my capabilities,” Loki mused. “You could have been sleep-walking this whole time, and never known. Every little sound you’ve made, echoing throughout this lovely room, and out into your bedroom, for your love to hear.”

The inventor hunched in on himself, trying to make himself smaller. Visceral horror knotted in his gut. He had screamed Loki’s name, after all. Pepper would know something was up. She would make him explain every last piece of it. Every little thing. She would demand to understand, and then she would be so hurt, that he would feel like he needed this, like he deserved this. She wouldn’t get it, and he knew it.

Loki could read all of those thoughts clear as day, not by any mystic means, but just by watching what he could still see of his pet’s face, and how his body reacted. He considered adding, with a few extra drops of poison, _Will you ever be able to impress her again, after she has seen this? Heard you like this? Would you be able to keep her, if you could not?_ but he... refrained. For now. And most likely forever.

He didn’t want to chase her away, he realized. She was clearly important to not only Tony’s work life, but his personal one. The look on the inventor’s face was a bit too similar to one Loki had felt on his own, the day Thor had sewn his lips together. That told him more about how Tony truly felt about the woman, and how good and warm-hearted she must truly be, than anything else. Were she a man, she would surely be as arrogant as Thor, but Midgard did a similar disservice to their women, culturally, as in Asgard did, often unfairly humbling their women in vain attempts to make them meeker. Pepper had clearly fought her way past the false expectations of others with a spine of steel and sharp heels on her boots. He had little doubt that Pepper would remind him disconcertingly of what Sigyn had been like, when they were both far, far younger.

Time to move past this then, for both of their sakes, Loki decided.

“She has not heard,” he said, his tone only a little less sharp. “You lie in your bed, breathing slowly and deeply. You are aroused, but you have not moved, or made any untoward sounds.”

Tony gasped small and acute, then let out the surprisingly heavy breath with a choked-off sob. “Thank you, my god. Thank you.”

“I do not like putting on a show for those around my cell, either, Tony dear, but my magics can be rather unsettled by such abrupt endings to dreams. I do not appreciate a third night in a row of awakening to the stares of less refined criminals than myself, where I lay in my bed so very hard for you.”

The inventor trembled. “I’m sorry, I won’t do it again, Loki. I promise, I’m sorry.”

Loki stood, then, banishing the illusion of impossible restraint, as well as his trousers, as he approached his pet, shutting the shower door behind him softly. He curled his fingers in Tony’s hair tightly to hold him in place before the inventor could look up at him. Then he reached up to the chain between the handcuffs, and manipulated the dream a bit further, adding links to it one at a time, slowly lowering his pet until Tony’s knees touched the floor of the shower, and he could feel Tony’s breath against his cock, and how Tony leaned toward it, even as Loki’s grip on his hair held him back. “Are you truly, Tony? Or only sorry that you underestimated what punishment awaited you?”

“S-sorry for interrupting, like I did.” He glanced up the god with more fire than anticipated, and added, almost nervously, like he wasn’t certain it was the right thing to say, but it felt too true to restrain: “I didn’t mean to share what we do. With anyone. It’s mine. And yours. Alone.” He swallowed thickly, fully hard again as he had been since he’d finally caught sight of Loki’s aroused state.

The god felt lighter, suddenly, at that.

“I don’t want to be shared quite _that_ way either,” Tony murmured. “Please?”

“Very good,” Loki purred. “Then so long as you do not make such a mistake again, intentionally, I too will add no further witnesses to our actions.”  Then, loosening the grip of his fingers, he added, “Now you may suck me.”

Tony’s mouth wrapped around the head of his cock hastily, moaning high and blissful as his tongue swirled through the precome there, then sucking hard and moaning louder still when both of the god’s hands gripped his hair this time and pulled him down sharply, making his eyes water a little as the whole length invaded him.

Loki was soon panting hard, gripping one of those convenient metal bars with one hand, squeezing harder than a human could withstand, while his other remained barely more gentle where it stayed, only occasionally tugging the inventor’s mouth down faster, mostly letting Tony feel that he was redeeming himself.

The inventor was certainly dedicated and enthusiastic in that task, throwing himself into it with more noise than before, more force, almost making himself choke several times in his efforts to suck the Loki dry by self-irrumation. His whole body was straining forward, unable to get closer due to the chains and cuffs. One of his knees lost traction on the slick tile and slipped back, knocking Tony’s weight further forward so that he did choke, once, and then again as the god held him in place and came down his throat, shuddering appreciatively as Tony forced himself to swallow more than once, milking him as he softened, then making a desperately needy sound as Loki stayed there until he grew hard again.

He pulled back only enough to let his pet breathe. Then he pushed back in and demanded hoarsely: “ _Again._ ”

The second time was much longer, more taunting, as the god took his sweet time  with that even sweeter mouth, and by the end of it Tony was all but humping air, he was so close to coming. He needed something. _Anything_.

Loki stepped closer, his long, smooth shin brushing against his pet’s cock.

Tony cried out and shuddered, struggling to press closer, just a little more friction.

“Look at yourself, pet.”

With a visible effort of focus, Tony could see himself reflected in the water-speckled glass walls around them: wrung out, chained up, helpless and attempting to rub off on a super-villain’s leg. Tilting his head back up, he met the god’s gaze again, his throat bared so that his convulsive swallow appeared further exaggerated. “Please let me come,” he pleaded. “Let me, please.”

“You will pleasure yourself like this, as quickly as you can. I will then release your bonds, and you will lick my skin clean,” Loki commanded.

“Yes, please, Loki. Thank you,” Tony gasped. “Can I now?”

“Yes. Begin _now_.”

Every muscle in the inventor’s body strained against his bonds as he tried to press closer, for more contact. He kissed the trickster’s hipbones as he writhed there, and brushed his teeth across one of them as he came, with only a few desperate grinds of his hips, and kept coming, so intensely he almost forgot to breathe, until he heard murmurs from the god of lies and felt those long fingers running through his hair, assuring him that he had done beautifully, that he was good, that he was gorgeous when he was wrecked like this. Only then did the inventor seem to realize there were tears running down his face and his whole body was still trembling, little shocks of too-intense sensitivity still rolling through him.

“It seems you very much needed this, Tony dear,” Loki said.

Nodding slightly, the inventor whimpered, “Yes. Thank you. I needed... wow, I needed this. I’m not sure I want to know how you knew I needed it, but thank you.”

He had needed to confront his fears where Pepper finding out about this was concerned, Loki realized slowly. The inventor had needed to know this was safe, that she was safe, that she wasn’t a target, and somehow Loki had made that promise.

 _Bad choice_ , he thought, but without much conviction.

It was difficult to be convinced of such a thing, with Tony looking so gloriously wrecked for him, leaning exhaustedly against his hip. “You’re not done, of course.”

Eyelids fluttering open again, the inventor looked up at him with a shameless half-smirk and waved his fingers pointedly, to bring attention back to his restraints.

Loki vanished the cuffs and chain, smiling a little at how the inventor barely maintained his balance enough to avoid embarrassingly slipping into a face-plant on his own shower floor. Tony then rested one hand on the floor and leaned down, staring straight up into the trickster’s eyes as he licked every drop of his own release off of Loki’s pale skin.

“Very good, pet.” When the inventor finished, and sat up on his knees again, Loki cupped his face and tugged him up, so that he and his pet were both standing. “Now... I believe these metal fixtures are for very specific purposes. I strongly recommend that you choose just one of them to hang onto as I fuck you, to start.”

Tony’s tongue darted out, sweeping across his still-swollen lips. “Yes.”

Loki then proceeded to make absolutely certain that ever inch of that shower, every fixture and feature, would now be associated in his pet’s mind with something the trickster had done to make him scream.

 

~~

 

Of course Frigga noticed something was amiss, from the beginning.

Of course, she also didn’t mention it until she had been collecting evidence of her son’s state of increasing distraction over her weekly visits for just over three-and-a-half months. She also decided to make her point by making her clever, charming, and self-possessed youngest son look and feel like an utter fool, first and foremost, before then delivering to him the clear message that she already knew what he had done, and was judging him for it. She knew, in truth, that he would need to be tricked into believing that, consciously or otherwise, before he would ever admit it to her willingly. Even if, perhaps, she didn’t know any such thing for certain––which, also of course, she knew better than to admit to yet.

Those throughout the realms who wanted to say something kind about Loki, be it sincerely or for expressly diplomatic purposes, tended to wind up saying, “Well, he is very much his mother’s son, in all the ways which should honor her.” Some of them might add, _and in a lot of other ways that do honor to no one_ , under their breaths, some louder than others, but it was one of the most common observations people made, of Asgard’s royal family, along with how Thor and Loki were like night and day, that Frigga looks more beautiful with time, that Odin’s beard is majestic, and that Loki is too clever for anyone’s good.

And it was far from without precedent.

Laying in bed, Loki had been staring at his own ceiling, an open book ignored on his chest. He had gotten distracted from reading the text (which he had already read too many times to be very riveted by regardless) by thoughts of what he should do about his illusions in this cell being susceptible to dropping, when Tony awoke too abruptly. The ‘express route’ which Loki used to access the inventor’s dreams despite the vast distances normally involved in reaching a place like Midgard (one with such a massive population making the local metaphysical landscape a massive array of gordian knots from interconnections of relationships, cultures, and ideas) seemed to cause a whiplash-like effect, when Tony’s dream-state was too quickly terminated. It was the impact of landing back within his own body again so abruptly which kept wreaking havoc with the delicate illusion spells, which he was forced to use only minimal magic to construct, in order to maintain his power sufficiently to keep making these nightly visits.

He might have been working on the whole tangled metaphysical problem silently in his own head for over an hour.

He also might have spent the last ten minutes unaware of Frigga’s illusion appearing in the cell with him, visible only to his own eyes and deterring those of the guards from looking at either of them, and her staring at him expectantly. It wasn’t exactly subtle.

“ _Loki_.”

The trickster startled badly as he hadn’t done in a couple of centuries. The book might have gone flying, and barely been side-stepped by his mother’s illusion, where it almost struck her; instead it hit the transparent force-field walls of his cell and burst into flames and then out of existence shortly before repairing itself and reappearing on a nearby shelf, where Frigga glared at it sidelong for a moment before fixing her gaze back on her son, one eyebrow raised archly. “Really? The book?”

“Knowledge is dangerous, so I’m told?” Loki tried.

She shot him a look. It was a very maternal, demanding, and disapproving sort of look, which asked any number of silent questions.

From experience, the god of lies knew better than to begin answering any of those questions before they were stated aloud; however, it had taken him several centuries to be able to actually remain quiet, the longer she continued to look at him like that. He squirmed only a little after the first minute, but was losing ground fast.

Finally, the queen sighed. “What are you up to now?”

“Nothing.”

The look was back. Now with a glare of sharper disapproval at the not-even-a- _little_ -bit-convincing lie.

“Nothing _very bad_?”

The glare intensified a little as she tilted her head down a little further, as though about to charge into an oncoming army.

“Just... pestering one particular person, via dreams, occasionally, but it’s more complicated, but I swear I haven’t hurt him that he didn’t enjoy?” Loki rattled off, far too quickly, then immediately cringed. “Damn.”

Frigga stepped closer to him, her arms folded over her chest. She looked amused this time, and a little concerned. “He must be very impressive, to have so much of your attention to himself.”

Her younger son scoffed. “Hardly that much of my attention.”

“Do you know how long I stood watching, before you noticed me?”

The trickster’s face fell slightly. “A... few seconds?” He could hope, but the look she gave him made him very worried. It suggested that he was very wrong, and the implications of that were more startling than he wanted to admit, for a trickster who usually so prided himself on awareness of his own surroundings. As much as he felt conflicted over even calling her his mother, these days, he trusted her to know his nature better than even himself, in some regards. He had ceased to be ashamed of looking to her for that sort of information long ago, but now he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the true answer here.

“Many minutes.”

That was the precise moment Loki realized he was doomed and humans were quite possibly the most insidious conquerors he had ever heard of. How foolish had he been to allow himself to be ensnared by one clearly a genius and master weapons-smith whose intention was to personally ensure world peace on his own planet? It had been such an elegant trap. He was in awe of it, based primarily on the increasingly deep concern he could see on Frigga’s face as she read him.

His mother began to smirk at him. “Oh, you poor thing. Who is he?”

“A mortal,” Loki sighed, his voice suddenly heavy with resignation and genuine regret that this would doubtlessly be one more way people would inevitably compare him to Thor. “Damn. I didn’t intend-” He cut off at her still deeper apparent worry for him, clearly visible in her expression. “I am not nearly so important to him,” he explained reluctantly. “He has more to occupy his mind and his time than I.” He gestured around the cell expansively with a grimace. “You’re right, however, as you always infuriatingly are, mother dear, that an unusual degree of of my... attention and interests are fixated. Clearly, this cell is driving me mad despite even such a fine distraction as that, if I am becoming so lost in my own mind that I lose track of my own safety-”

She held a finger close enough to his lips not to touch and banish her own illusion, but more than close enough to shut him up. “Loki. You look well.”

He glared at her. “I won’t for long if I ever get out of this cell, if I can be so easily snuck up on. I am not exactly the most popular and beloved fellow in the nine realms, after all, and a number of people who do not like me tend to carry sharp objects that they wish to drag through my vital organs,” he snapped bitterly.

Calmly, Frigga reached down and tugged his chin up. “Now that you’re aware of yourself, and I am at last informed, know that my arrival was silent. Your ears have yet to fail you.”

He relaxed a bit further. “I still should have seen you. I should have felt your magic...”

“I came here earlier than my usual visitations solely because I have been watching for you to weaken your own restricted powers sufficiently to be unable to detect a sufficiently simple illusion such as this. You drained yourself that much just now, by the spells you were attempting to weave when I arrived,” she pointed out. “I am curious as to what those were, and where the rest of your magic keeps draining into these days, for you do continue exercising it, but what you accomplish with it, no one seemed able to discern.”

Loki stared at her for a long moment, then sighed, letting his head loll back in submission. “You’re still not wrong. You know you aren’t,” he sighed. “Your ability to do this to me, repeatedly, over so many centuries continues to astonish me.”

“I’m just trying to make it a little easier for you. You don’t have to be afraid, if this mortal is able to make you happy.”

He blinked at that, a little alarmed by the very thought. “What?”

“You are more yourself than I have seen in a long time. I had wondered how you were doing so, despite being locked away like this, but every visit, you more resemble the mischievous, troublesome and clever little liar I’ve known so long,” she said, with considerable affection. She had, after all, taught him his first half-truths, as a means to deter certain sorts of bullying from some of Thor’s friends.

Loki stared at her, utterly poleaxed. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

With a knowing look that had made the trickster wary that every seer in the universe was somehow channeling his mother when they looked at him with too much of their Gift active, she smiled at him, just a little too sharp to be quite so kind as most people mistook her for. To those she loved, she could be rather ruthless, in the softest of ways, that could leave the deepest wounds, and teach the most uncomfortable sorts of lessons. “I could request Hel visit you. Odin cannot deny her such, and she could confirm it for you as well, I suspect,” she challenged.

The god’s lips twitched in dismay. “No.”

“Yes.”

He swore and covered his face with both hands.

“You’re certain that you do not provide him similar solace?”

“Solace is a rather different matter,” Loki said, understandably muffled. “I certainly provide that. It’s the entire basis of how we spend time together, but that is all that we are, and he has many other places to find other forms of it, than do I.” He lowered his hands and glanced at her sharply. “He also is in love with a woman who shares his life and his bed, and I do not actually wish to kill her, for reasons I do not like to wonder about, because it makes me very uncomfortable.”

“Because you would lose him?”

“You see, that’s a very uncomfortable thought I keep having and trying to get rid of, because I’m going to lose him any day now, and I _know that_ ,” he snapped. “Whenever the next disaster strikes Asgard from the folly of the house of Odin, I will doubtlessly be required to aid for my unique capabilities and incomparable _lifetime of experience_ dealing with their messes. Once I am free to travel freely again outside of dreams, I cease to be in any way trustworthy.”

She sighed at him and made her illusion appear to sit in a chair beside his bed. “You always planned to let him go with such ease? Truly?”

Loki shut his eyes and tried not to think about how, in retrospect, that probably should’ve been a warning sign. “Yes,” he said numbly.

“What did you then plan to do?”

“Run far from here. Possibly spend time in Helheim until my children cannot stand me and force me to spend a summer in Alfheim. It’s been at least two centuries since I’ve done that. Sufficient to merit such a vacation, perhaps. After that, I’d return to make Odin very sorry that he betrayed me so deeply as he has. I shall conveniently have all the time on vacation to concoct thoroughly gorgeous strategies to that end, and honestly––I've been really looking forward to it.”

Frigga shook her head at him, chuckling softly "I can't see reason to stop you, but I do still question your judgement. You're certain that you can do this?” The 'and keep yourself intact?' was, her son sensed, also being implied. In more ways than one.

“He wouldn’t dare dry to extradite me from Helheim,” Loki pointed out. “And there are plenty in Alfheim who have always been sympathetic toward me, and who like me better than any Aesir.” He snorted. “I’ll be able to tell them they can now rest assured I’m not even truly Aesir, so they can go back to making no such exceptions save for you."

Her smile waned. “He might still send after you.”

“You'll have no reason to worry for my safety, between my wits and their old grudges. My friends are all very dangerous and unsavory people, Frigga,” he assured her. “I do try to make sure they can take care of themselves, that way.”

“Would you consider this mortal of your liking a friend to you?”

Loki winced, and tried to consider it rationally. “No,” he said, after a long few moments. “Everyone he knows in Midgard believes me to be his enemy, including the woman that he loves, and whom he is terrified of losing. He would not be able to act as my friend even if he might wish to, and furthermore, all of my knowledge of him and how I acquired it are potential weaknesses, capable of destroying the trust and faith several important people in his life hold for him. They are but few in number, those who truly trust him, but he cherishes them. He would not trust me in his life, beyond dreams.”

Frigga shook her head. “I cannot say you have chosen unwisely. Not when it has done you apparent good.”

The trickster shook his head. “I’ll be fine.”

She shot him the concerned look again.

“I’ve weathered worse, have I not?” he joked bitterly. “At least I know this one is leaving beforehand, and can prepare for it.” _Unlike when Angrboða vanished without warning_. _For a century. And returned as though it had been nothing, despite Hel being by then tall as she._ He tried not to think back on those days, much. Those before and after, with his family, had been grand, but the return of Angrboða had been a chaotic one. He had said things even his daughter barely forgave him for. Angrboða never would, nor Sigyn, and for that Loki would never forgive himself, either.

That was the first time his daughter had banished him to wander the land of the dead bodiless for a few years, though, and it had somehow greatly strengthened their relationship, that he had thanked her for doing so the moment she brought him back. They understood one another all too well.

Of course Frigga would threaten to bring in Hel for unequivocal word on whether or not he might appear to be in great health and possibly suffering an inconvenient level of acute infatuation with an infuriating mortal.

“His name is Anthony Stark,” Loki said. “Or Tony, for short.”

The queen of Asgard beamed at him, then. “Thank you for telling me that.”

“Please don’t attempt to remove Pepper Potts from his life,” he added quickly, eyes narrowing at her. “Promise me, mother.”

Her lips pursed slightly. “You don’t get to call me that only just now, of all times, for the first time since your fall, and tell me you will simply let this man drop out of your life, if you’re going to be so brazenly and _clumsily_ manipulative in your plea to me.”

The trickster winced. “Frigga. Please. Don’t. I’m personally convinced he would drink himself to death before I could possibly reach him, if he lost her,” he tried again, more carefully. “Therefore, please, promise me that you will not interfere with either of their lives for the sake of my mere infatuation with the more rude one.”

She raised her eyebrows at him.

He glanced away almost sheepishly. “I might have stood in a few of his dreams awhile before taking over, and simply observed. They often contain memories of time spent with her.” He was suddenly aware of why exactly that thought made him a little uncomfortable to dwell on. He didn’t like it. “I wish you had left me my illusion.”

“Never, Loki. You would not talk to me at all, I suspect, if I did that.”

He smiled at her despite himself. “Even though you are not my true mother, and I have trouble calling you such now, you know I love you dearly,” he murmured. “I will say otherwise in anger, but you know my lies better than I, as you continue to prove.”

“For my own sake, as much as yours,” she said flatly.

He sighed. “I appreciate you all the more for that, too. Please, for now, I... need to think about this alone for a time.”

“I was wondering what you were about to request.”

“Aside from your promise?” he reminded her.

“I give you my word that I will not meddle with their lives while they are together.”

“Frigga!” He sounded almost scandalized.

She smiled sweetly. “That’s all you’re getting.”

He shook his head. “And people wonder where I learned such tricks. On and on they wonder, aloud, how I could have turned out so wicked.”

“More the fools not worth listening to the opinions of you then know them to be.”

He smiled at the old lesson from his childhood and shook his head. “Thank you, and I resent you deeply. Leave me, please.”

“As you wish,” she said, sounding a little amused, before she disappeared in a shower of light.

Loki watched the lights all fade and sighed, “I pulled a Thor. How did this happen?” With a low snarl, he rolled over and buried his face in his pillow with a self-loathing huff of exasperation. _This was not the_ plan _. This was_ not _the plan. I’m not supposed to want to keep him more than I want to keep him away from the rest of my life. No. No no no._

 

~~

 

The only option, of course, was to forget about it.

There was nothing he could do, and dwelling upon the inevitable end would do nothing but sour what time he continued to spend with his... with Tony.

It worked, for a long while. Right up until dark elves sent a Kursed warrior into the prisons of Asgard, who then proceeded breaking everyone out. When the thing approached his own cage, Loki had known precisely what it was, precisely what it was after, and that all of Asgard was in danger, while the Aether resided there, and while this warrior’s master still lived and breathed.

He knew not who had the Aether, or who had brought it there, but he knew the convergence was due soon enough, and he knew what the Aether might bring to it.

So Loki smiled into Algrim’s eyes as the Kursed one stared at him, stopping before his cage and coming no closer. His smile was small and might have looked harmless, had it only belonged to someone else. _Let me out if you like_ , he dared. _You might be amused by the results. I know I will be._

The warrior started to leave.

“You might want to take the stairs on the left,” he said, knowing where Odin should be, and hoping the Kursed creature might manage to destroy the old gallows-god’s good eye.

He didn’t know, until later, what a mistake he had made.

 

~~

 

Being not allowed out of his cell, even if in chains, to attend Frigga’s funeral, was one more offense for which Loki would never forgive Odin.

The prison being deathly quiet and empty, in the wake of the dark elves’ attack, all other prisoners moved to a more secure place, such that all sounds from outside now echoed in the deathly quiet of this particular prison, where Loki alone had been left since his own cell was so very undamaged, was an additional measure of cruelty, or a more shoddy attempt at mercy, than Loki could stand.

He could hear it. He could not see her. No one would tell him how it happened, save that it had been the dark elves, and she had died a warrior’s death.

Unable to stand waiting any longer, or trying to resist the urge to reach out despite Tony’s apparent attempts to avoid slumber, he forced himself to slip into dreaming, and find a way to pull Tony under with him.

“You did that on purpose,” the inventor immediately groaned, face-down at Loki’s desk as he suddenly appeared to be.

“You were avoiding me.”

Tony looked up at him and widened his eyes a little. “You too?” he asked, seeming to refer to Loki’s not-exactly-immaculate appearance.

Loki wasn’t certain he wanted to know quite how he looked, just then, but glancing down and seeing blood still dripping from the wound on his foot, he got a clear idea, and decided to ignore the question altogether.

“I’m an emotional wreck, just the usual mess with Pepper, but what the fuck happened to _you?_ ”

“There was a... prison break.”

“Wait what?”

“I was not amongst one of the ones freed,” the god assured, “but I have some doubt that I will be here much longer.” He glanced upward, able to hear distant song accompanying the funeral, but seeing Tony’s face he realized the inventor couldn’t hear it. “Sorry. I’m... I can distantly hear her funeral. From my cell.” He swallowed thickly, eyes feeling far, far too wet for a moment before he banished them with an effort of sheer will.

“Oh. _Shit_.” He wasn’t surprised that the inventor didn’t have to ask for clarification. That he understood so much, without any of it having to be explicitly stated.

Loki realized he was going to miss that, soon. “I suspect I may be partially at fault, but I may also be trying rather too hard to blame myself again,” Loki said distantly. “I only gave directions to someone orchestrating the aforementioned jail-break.” He shook his head slowly, eyes very far away again. “I should go.”

“Hey, wait.”

The god shot him a weary look that was as pained and exasperated as he felt.

“I still owe you a drink. It’s my dream, works off my memories and all, so let’s go someplace I know serves some of the best cocktails in town. Furthermore, I bet you can come up with a way to make sure I’m not the only one drunk,” Tony offered. “It can be a remote vigil.”

The god stared at him for a long moment. He realized only then that his chance to escape was nigh, and almost didn’t want to accept it. Almost. Because then the next dream they shared after this would be their last occasion of truce, and with Loki freed and now a threat to all Tony loved, the mortal would risk too much, continuing this with him. Hearing him actually say it, Loki also knew now, would wound him deeply. He wasn’t sure what that might actually do to him, these days. With past lovers who had pushed him away as such, he tended to... say things he never meant, nor ever had truly wished to say.

So it was for the best, then, for this to be their last meeting.

Not wanting to leave so soon then, Loki let himself ask the inventor, in the calmest tones he could manage, which still sounded a little rough, “What is this?”

“Pepper’s been gone three weeks, I suspect she’s been thinking about moving out again altogether, even more than I suspect somebody has infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. so deeply that they’ve grown roots into it and I still can’t track the fuckers, there’s bombings going around from some lunatic calling himself ‘The Mandarin’ like he’s not clearly far from Chinese and he just almost killed one of my oldest friends,” Tony rattled off tonelessly. “This is selfishness because I was hoping to avoid sleeping and overdose on caffeine in my workshop until daylight, but you’ve brought me here, and now the only thing I want more than a really strong drink, is to not be drinking alone, okay?” he sighed. “C’mon.” He snapped his own fingers this time and suddenly Loki was seated at a familiar bar instead of the bed. Tony was standing behind the bar, seeming comfortably right at home as he began opening cabinets and a small freezer.

It took Loki a moment to realize where he was until he recognized the landing pad outside along the balcony, along with the familiar view beyond it. Then he took in the transformations that the rest of the place had undergone. “Ah.” He also had to wonder if this was some form of power-play: showing Loki that all of the marks he left behind would be healed over.

He hoped not, and the lightness of the inventor’s voice as he caught the god looking about and said, “Yeah, changed a few things,” was more the tone of a man slightly embarrassed that he might have just made an accidental faux pas, than of a man with a point to make.

“Much improved, without my crater,” Loki said, when he realized the inventor was only uncertain whether or not he would be punished for exerting so much control over their environment. The trickster decided that wasn't a point of pride he felt any need to press.

“I considered keeping that, actually. Display glass over it. A little commemorative placard on it, even,” Tony teased.

The trickster shot him a glare, only halfheartedly wondering if perhaps he should reconsider.

Tony just grinned, and made them both some quite strong drinks, artfully enough that the movements of his hands distracted the god of lies entirely from the whole matter.

At least, a bit of effort to meddle with their dreams made them seem strong, once actually drunk. Loki hadn’t done such a thing in a very long time, and said a number of things that he would spend the next days regretting. He hadn’t been able to ignore the obvious presence of Pepper Potts’ influence everywhere. At least, it all seemed terribly obvious to him now. Again: knowing why this bothered him did not help him feel any better. In fact, he felt worse. Apparently, that inspired him to tell Tony, in an overly-poetic manner, to stop panicking about the state of his relationship because it was clear as day to the trickster that Miss Potts had no plans to leave anytime soon.

 _Of course, I do not know if the key reason that I can’t imagine her wanting to leave you, is because it would ache me to hope that she might not prove loyal enough, and good enough to you, to keep you with her_ , he didn’t add. _I don’t actually want your happiness to offend me, whether or not I’m a part of it,_ was his next thought, and also unsaid, because he didn’t even want to acknowledge he’d even had it.

They spoke of the past, and the future. Loki was further startled and enamored with the man’s intellect as they went––even Frigga hadn’t asked him if he had failed the invasion on purpose, though he had wound up telling her under suspicion that she already knew, the thought of which made his heart ache all the more, and made him _want_ still more that he couldn’t be allowed to have––and eventually the heavier topics gave way, with further application of alcohol, to self-deprecating humor, until Loki had asked a moderately absurd question, and gotten a surprisingly thought-provoking answer.

“How do you...” Loki gestured at him vaguely. “How do you still care?”

“Hmm?”

“About people?”

Tony considered. “I don’t care as much as I play on TV, but my story does: Iron Man’s story. I’m not a good guy. I’m basically a bad guy, deep down, but all of my actual judgement calls when it comes to other people boil down to, ‘well, clearly they’re not me, and probably are better at heart than I am, and if they’re better than Tony Stark at heart, they probably deserve a chance more than I do most days’ and that’s about how it goes.”

A look of pain and something akin to acute self-loathing cracked through Loki’s expression before smoothing out again quickly. He knew that Tony ignored it deliberately, and silently wondered, not for the first time, how this mortal functioned inside, that he could be like this, just in conversation? “That is a wiser lesson than I learned from my own falls, I’m afraid.” He finished off the bottle of scotch and set it aside on the table.

A long pause followed. They were both a bit too drunk to keep proper track of dream-time versus waking-time, so it seemed to lighten slowly, as dawn’s light reached the windows.

“I do not know when I will be able to reach you again, depending upon how these next weeks go,” Loki said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“Just keep alive, right? I like having you around.”

Loki smiled at him with a little too much sincere affection, and kissed him almost gently, because he couldn’t stop himself from doing so one last time, even if all too briefly, before the dream ended.

 

~~

 

Loki was not pleased to be faced with Thor only a few hours later.

He was amused by his brother’s dedication and wit, in his approach to seeking aid, but there was a fugue of grief over the trickster a bit too deep to feel anything much beyond numb coldness and bitter anger in response, even as he was inevitably invited out of his cage, just the one time, to help save a bunch of worlds, yet again.

“I know you seek vengeance as much as I do. You help me escape Asgard, and I will grant it to you. Vengeance. And afterward, this cell.”

Just like old times. Higher stakes now, of course. Still... it felt terribly familiar.

“You must be truly desperate to come to me for help,” he mocked, then added curiously, “What makes you think you can trust me?”

“I don't,” Thor said.

_Only half a lie, this time. Interesting_

“Mother did.”

_Oh, I see: there is the other half. You trust our mother raised herself a loyal monster, and you’re not wrong, however tragically._

“You should know that when we fought each other in the past, I did so with a glimmer of hope that my brother was still in there somewhere. That hope no longer exists to protect you. You betray me, and I will kill you.”

 _Oh, how sweet, that I can tell you wish that were a lie more than I do,_ Loki concluded, and the bitter tinge of it colored his smile. “Hm. When do we start?”

 

~~

 

Loki felt as though he must be dreaming for most of what followed, because Thor seemed to have actually used wit rather than brawn at every available turn in order to get out of Asgard, he was out in the open air and sunlight for the first time in months and could finally breathe again without feeling cemented down by the whole weight of the great realm eternal churning above him carefree and maddeningly dull, his magic being out of restraints entirely for the first time in so long that it still seemed to creak with disuse in his own mind even as he flew a stolen ship through a thin place between the worlds like it was a parlor trick, leaving him winded and shaking with emotion and strain from the exertion of it. The chaotic ride was painful and thrilling for his mind and his magic to adjust to, in the wake of his imprisonment.

He managed to keep his wits in his words, but otherwise let Thor drag him along with less trouble than he might have caused, mostly out of curiosity to see what his brother would agree to next for this surprisingly brilliant woman, Dr. Foster. Oh, and also to save all of the realms from destruction.

Surely that was what had his brother so eager to make certain the Aether was destroyed––as long as it did not involve destroying Dr. Foster too, of course.

Loki didn’t bother pointing out that a few years ago, Thor would’ve concurred with Odin’s assessment of the girl being essentially doomed. He did twist the knife a little, though. He was nothing if not the man’s younger brother, loathe though he was to admit it most days, lately.

“Say goodbye,” Loki intoned.

Thor’s ire was palpable. “Not this day!”

The trickter’s own bitterness got the better of him, then, his words falling with more of his own heart in them than he even intended them to anymore: “This day, the next, a hundred years, it's nothing! It's a heartbeat. You'll never be ready.” He tried to distance himself from it with an extra knife twist, just to dull his own pain. “The only woman whose love you prized will be snatched from you.”

“And will that satisfy you?”

Loki stared at and through him. “Satisfaction's not in my nature.”

Thor insisted, “Surrender's not in mine.”

The god of lies knew that to be true, and wondered what it must be like to have a conviction like that, allowed to remain so unbroken, for so long, and against such odds. How empowering that must feel. Loki glanced at the hammer he had been responsible for inspiring the creation of, and then looked away again, toward Jane. Feeling his thoughts drift back towards Earth and a very different, but also brilliant, mortal, he tried to stop them, and failed.

 

~~

 

One botched attack on Malekith, and loss of the Aether later, Loki had once again successfully managed to convince Thor and others that he was dead, which made things so much easier. He supposed that he would have to stop seeming to die or otherwise be lost forever right before Thor’s eyes. Eventually, it would just cease to make an impact. Also he had to arrange some way of mocking Thor for not even taking proper care of his remains. Otherwise people would stop believing him before Thor stopped falling for it, and then the whole thing would be useless. One day, he really would stop.

This day was not that day.

Today, he had _work_ to do.

Changing into an uncomfortably wingless dragon-shape to wait out the sandstorm, repairing the ship, and making his way back to Asgard all proved so easy. His concerns about Odin’s weaknesses and his mind possibly going were also proven, and after a lot of snarling and shape-shifting, fighting as dishonorably as his adopted father did, but quicker and with more practiced ease, the old Aesir was tricked into trapping himself, in the middle of a complex web woven by Loki, which turned upon him like a net woven out of live serpents, containing him, locking him away, and dropping him into a sedated form of stasis: enough to keep him alive, and well, and thankfully unconscious.

The whole of it, Loki tucked away beneath the throne, in a place once meant for the king to drop below in case of attempted assassinations, back in Bor’s time.

With his entire body shaking like a leaf, Loki stared at what he had done, and slowly began to drop the shields he had raised, upon his arrival, around Odin’s throne, to keep the battle from being overheard or interrupted. He was stunned, somehow, that his almost rather Thor-like direct-attack approach had actually worked.

Well. He had setup some unfair advantages before he strode in and attacked directly, of course, but he wasn’t _actually Thor_ , to be fair.

Instead he... wouldn’t be Loki for a while, either, he thought, donning the illusion of Odin like an extra layer of armor. He would play a new game for a while, just long enough to try something unfamiliar on for size: ruling as a better king than the one who had tried to raise him. He had never wanted the throne, in truth. He had wanted acknowledgement for his own worth and capabilities.

So. Time to prove to all the realms just what those were.

If only to shut them up enough to be left in peace afterward, if only for just how much blackmail he planned to collect, able to see as far as Heimdall from the All-Father’s throne.

Oh yes. He could set himself up to rule these realms from the shadows for the next century if he wanted to, but he would much rather they simply be unable to find him whenever he did not wish to be found, and that was a matter requiring more subtlety, patience, and time. It would also be worth far more to the likes of Loki. Especially once he actually woke Odin back up and needed to continue to survive, should the rest of his plans all go wrong.

It would suit him very well.

It might suit him even better, without the ache in his chest where he tried to remind himself that his sleep would not be allowed to drift tonight, for the first time in far too long. He would remain only in his own dreams.

Perhaps he could hope to see Tony in a few of them anyway.

 

~~

 

How Tony actually made it to Asgard turned out to be a funny story.

He accidentally hijacked Thor. It was brilliant.

“Who is this you’ve brought into Asgard this time, Thor?” asked the king, by the time Tony had been dragged before the throne, looking amused as fuck by the manacles and chains they had just applied to the exterior of his suit (after they all failed to find the hinges, or manipulate it with magic) at wrists, ankles and waist.

Tony wasn’t sure what it was about the sentence, or about Odin, that clued him in. Maybe it was his inexplicable sudden lack of instinctive desire to make the All-Father uncomfortable, as soon as he heard that. Maybe it was the slight mocking in the king’s tone that seemed just a bit too fraternal-sounding, at least––to someone who reminisces very frequently about being commanded around regally by a sexy god, it seemed a bit too fraternal. Maybe it was the way Odin’s joviality vanished and gave way to a slightly-too-familiar masked expression as soon as Thor moved aside enough to reveal the chained-up armored mortal behind him.

Either way, it took Tony less than a minute of being close enough to see the whites of Odin’s eyes to suddenly get it. He grinned wickedly, as soon as he realized, but if the king was at all worried by it, he made no sign.

“Father, this mortal was brought here quite on accident,” Thor assured. “He is a fine warrior and sorcerer of Midgard with whom I have fought alongside many times now. He is as shield-brother to me, and occasionally does remind me of the true brother I have lost. Please, punish him not for this trespass.”

Odin’s mask remained almost too-impassive.

 _Having trouble with the controls, sweetheart?_ Tony said, quieter than a whisper, just under his own breath.

“I see no trespass, here, to forgive,” the All-Father then said, in impeccably gracious tones. “After all, he has broken no oaths, nor did he willingly go counter to Asgardian law. As a Midgardian, he would only be subject to the sections of the law which relate to travelers from Midgard, in any case.” He smiled just a little. “You are free to go.”

“Actually,” Tony said. “Can I have a word with you, Papa bear?”

The whole court was now staring in incredulous, deathly silence.

“Stark...” Thor warned very quietly. “What are you doing?”

The inventor waved a hand dismissively and whispered, “Just trust me.”

The Thunderer frowned at him, adding even more softly,  “This is precisely why you remind me of my brother, at times, Stark.”

“I’m flattered.” Tony offered a shamelessly brilliant grin.

“May I ask why, Midgardian?” Odin inquired, sounding sincerely curious, and a bit condescendingly amused.

To Tony’s ear, it sounded a lot like an impression of Odin Loki had done while drunk, the last time he’d seen the god, and maybe something showed on his face. “I’ve got a few questions on those laws. We don’t have any written records of them left on Earth, but being able to hand S.H.I.E.L.D. all of the Asgardian laws that relate only to us down on Earth? Pretty valuable, and I’m curious about it myself.” As improvised bullshit went, he figured that’d do for the time being.

Rising from his throne and stepping down to join them at the foot of it, the king of Asgard nodded to them both, and then gestured for Tony to follow him. “Let us walk, then, Mr. Stark. Thor, you are dismissed.”

The inventor felt utterly vindicated, then, because if that wasn’t Loki, Tony would eat his own helmet, and Thor’s for dessert.

Thor watched them go in a state of considerable confusion.

“Don’t touch me until we’re out of public view, please. This illusion deteriorating prematurely would be bad for us both, I think you agree,” said the trickster, in his own voice, aimed only into Tony’s ear, allowing no eavesdropping.

Tony nodded, but said nothing, though the effort required him to keep his jaw clenched, as they walked. Led into a private study, doors locked behind him, he then turned and punched Loki very, very hard in the face, with one armored gauntlet.

Unprepared as the god had been for it, Loki hit the door hard enough to bounce off it and into the nearest shelf of books, which only a hasty spell prevented from becoming an avalanche of potential paper-cuts.

The added glittery expulsion of the Odin-illusion, as Loki hastily managed to get the books back onto the shelf, was an added bonus.

Stroking his now-cracked jaw, the god emitted a pained hiss, and then growled out, “Yes, it’s charming to see you again, as well. I would _appreciate_ if you did not attempt that again.”

“Now that you’re on your guard, no. You could probably kill me, now your magic is back, without all that much effort, me being all sort of mortal and alone in this room with you. That said, do you know how _pissed off_ I am at you right now?” Tony snarled.

“Why would you be?” Loki snapped, his reaction instant. “You have absolutely no need of me, and I was adding unnecessary degrees of difficulty to your life for my own carnal indulgence. I thought word of my death might come to you as a relief, honestly.”

The inventor stared at him, mouth agape. “How...” He ran both hands through his hair. He sucked in a breath, and let it out slowly. It only shook a little bit. “Loki, if I wanted you to stop, I would’ve told you. That’s how it was supposed to work. Did I call her name?”

“... In conversation.”

“We were drunk, and not even having sex, and it was clearly not in use as a safe-word at that time, don’t even play that.”

“Why are you even here, Stark?” Loki sighed, sounding pained and resigned and exhausted to deep within his bones. “I’m taking your accursed advice in regards to giving a damn about other people, and it’s working fairly well for my current plots, but it’s  also giving me nothing but constant headaches.” _All because none of them are you,_ he didn’t add.

Something small in the inventor’s chest shattered quietly. His expression shuttered. _I give shitty advice_ , he wanted to say. Anything to make the god stop looking at him like that. “Sorry. I made the mistake of thinking you might actually want me around, or something.”

“Don’t,” the god said, low and poisonous. “Don’t you dare.”

“Don’t _what_?” Tony shouted “Do I look like I came here with a plan? I didn’t think it would work to land me here, this was test number one out a planned five, and I didn’t think they would work until at least the third trial run, and I had no idea how long that was going to take, and I only found out you were even _actually alive_ two days ago, and I’ve been torn between wanting to hunt you down and strangle you, versus hunting you down and tying myself to your bed, you complete bastard!”

Loki opened his mouth, then snapped it shut again. After blinking twice, he tried again: “I’m sorry,” he hedged. “What?”

If he didn’t sound so _lost_ and genuinely _cracked_ when he said it, Tony might have considered hitting him again, but once for the sake of Thor’s heartbroken sad-face anytime someone mentioned his brother, was one thing: actually beating up his lover over etiquette was quite another, and it was a land of NO.

“You swore your word to me we’d have a final meeting, truce between us, and talk about where to go from there. How are you not risking oath-breaking?”

“Because I didn’t specify a time period during which it had to be completed, only that it eventually had to happen, presumably while we’re both alive,” Loki said, still sounding lost.

Tony strode closer and grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket, dragging him closer. “Then we’re having it now, because I’d really like to renegotiate.”

Loki was still a bit in shock. “I...”

“Dreams are fine, occasionally, but I’ve been dying to see you in my bed for ages, so I’d say starting there would be good. I promise to start spending more time there, since it’s currently been unoccupied for a couple months now. I keep trying to meditate as part of lucid dream practice stuff and just fall asleep on the couch, you see.” He cleared his throat, at that admission, but moved on again quickly, “Now about this pretending to be the king thing you’re doing: how long are you keeping it up? It obviously bores you to tears, like really obviously. It’s tedious, really, ruling the world. I know, I do it all the time, whenever I like. You should consider doing the same, really. I’m sure you can find some idiot capable enough to sit around and be goodly and diligent or whatever. You’d then have more free time away from the realm eternal for weeks at a time, mostly only taking over in case of the odd emergency so I can brag about how clever your brain is and how hot your ass is, and how you’re a really good fuck too. Actually, we can even attempt to _date_ , if you like.”

“Date.”

“By the way, I’m single. You want to make that less so?”

Loki cupped his face gently in both hands, just for a tender moment, before he crashed his lips against the mad inventor’s and kissed him as though he needed Tony’s tongue more than air. For his part, Tony made a surprised noise, followed by a much more ardent one, and kissed back for all he was worth.

It thus took them a few minutes before they could break apart for air.

“Ah, I’m going to call that a resounding yes?” Tony asked, a little dizzily.

“Would you be mine, beyond any contractual basis?”

“Yeah. Loki... Loki, honestly, I’m already yours.”

The trickster made a noise. It was an indecently lovely noise: helplessly affectionate and breathless and longing, all at once. “Then yes, I would very much like these terms.”

Tony rested their foreheads together with a sigh. “Good. Yes.”

“Tony...”

“Hm?”

“Thank you,” he said quietly. “For finding me.”

“Stick around. That’ll be thanks enough.”

At that, the god beamed at him, joy and mirth and wickedness all alight.

“So wait, why are you impersonating Odin right now?”

“He was going a little insane, which was unlikely to improve after Frigga’s death, and it was my personal thought that if I ruled his kingdom better than he had been doing for a while to prove a point, I could not only turn it against him and all of Asgard the usual accusations of jealousy and impulsiveness they level at me, prove furthermore that ‘no really, I do not want this throne, you can have it back now that I’m bored’ to further patronize them, and possibly also just directly blackmail Odin once he’s re-awoken.” He shrugged. “The other option was to possibly set Thor up on the throne on my way out, but he keeps balking at the damned idea.”

“...We could maybe fix that,” Tony said, beginning to smirk. “You’ve been at this game for how long? Just shy of a year?”

“Yes, but my original plans for this, I spread out over at least two years. Diplomacy in the nine realms, even expedited by a chaotic catalyst like myself, is still very slow going, but I have some very specific ideas.” He hesitated only a moment before saying, “It would do no harm, I suppose, to explain them to you?”

It was an invitation, Tony knew, to join in the trickster’s great games, and he grinned at it. “Please do.”

 

~~

 

An hour later they had settled at one of the tables in the study with several open books around them, and a large piece of parchment with ink-and-graphite designs sketched across it, loosely mapping out the nine realms, and labeling each of them with the names of their respective leaders and political parties.

Loki had been focusing particularly on Jotunnheim and getting them back into contact with people in Nifelheim, but had run into minor difficulties with Laufey’s successors still being against that idea.

“Why against?”

“There was an ideological split between the old ways of Nifelheim’s Nameless City, and the radical tribe of Jotunns led originally by Laufey’s father, who used the weapon known as the Casket of Ancient Winters to deliver his people, a lot of ice, and a sudden perpetual winter to Jotunnheim, smothering under miles of ice the many tribes and peoples that formerly had occupied that planet since long before the birth of even the likes of Bor, Odin’s father.”

“Any local people in Jotunnheim who actually want to be connected to Nifelheim again?”

“Most of their mages, yes, but not all. Of the rest of their people, roughly two-thirds would willingly re-unite, one-sixth are undecided, and the remainder are violently opposed to the idea.”

“I can see that being inconvenient.”

“Yes, but also I’ve given the casket back to those who originally made it, back in Nifelheim. The first of the Three has confirmed that within a year, their powers should be sufficiently restored that they could begin to de-thaw Jotunnheim, making way for the first lasting peace, and recovery from that tragedy, to occur in millennia.”

“Boring?”

“Dull as watching ice melt,” he sighed, “but still not half so mind-numbing as the courts of Alfheim when they’re being stubborn. Listen to this...”

The stories fell out between both of them for another hour, until another sheet of parchment appeared on table, with a more haphazard map of earth and all of their political issues, Tony giving Loki the same run-down for Earth that the god had provided for the other nine realms, as well as some of the other inter-planetary threats humanity kept running into lately. They began coordinating their own respective long-term plans around one another almost accidentally, fitting the edges together, interlinking and intertwining them. They argued at length about relations between Asgard and S.H.I.E.L.D., particularly, ending up deciding to continue leaving S.H.I.E.L.D. mostly in the dark and not letting them keep ahold of certain sorts of artifacts anymore, particularly given they seemed to be having some serious internal security concerns lately. And external ones. All-around sort of enmity from every possible direction, really, the more Tony thought about it.

Loki concluded with: “So in perhaps a year and a half, in the Earth’s measure, I will abdicate the throne, publicly shame Odin in the process, and you will have time to work with Thor and convince him that he might actually be king material, if only so we don’t deal with the All-Father’s increasing senility much longer. Fomenting a revolution around here should be easy enough, if the truth comes out that it’s been me on the throne this entire time, and start a few choice rumors about his fitness as king.”

“And in the meantime, you visit when you get too bored.”

“I will not be able to visit so often as I would like, actually.”

“I figured.” Tony leaned into the god’s touch as those long fingers carded through his hair a few times. “I’ve missed your sorry ass, you know.”

“I don’t begin to understand that, but I am selfishly greedy, and thus inclined to have you as long as you may let me,” Loki murmured.

After considering that for several moments, while being petted, Tony left his own chair in favor of straddling the god’s lap facing him head-on. “You’re good for me, actually. You helped me seriously cut back on my drinking, I was getting a normal human amount of sleep daily, and you genuinely helped me come to terms with failures in my life without condemning myself for them and wallowing in all of that like a big pool of self-loathing, because you could banish them cathartically. That was a big factor in winning me over, but beyond that, you’re not only gorgeous with legs that go on forever; you’re shattered, and so brilliant you awe me a little and I want to pick your brain apart piece by piece to figure out what everything in it does, but I could tell I wasn’t the only one benefitting from it. You were more yourself with me, the longer we were together, outside all the bondage, and the more I saw of that, the more I coveted, which was very counter-productive to maintaining a relationship with Pepper too. In the end, she and I didn’t work out, because we’re not alike enough to work long-term. You... my god, how could I _ever_ get tired of you? Just when I think I’ve got you all worked out, you come up with something  new and crazy and brilliant, or ancient that I’ve never fucking heard of but also still crazy and unusual even for you, and you _shock and awe_ me, you impress me, and I want more of you in my life.” He cleared his throat. “So there’s that.”

Loki drew him down until their foreheads touched again. He breathed the inventor in slowly. “I have been fascinated by you since the very beginning.”

“You still never took what I wasn’t offering, nor sabotaged anything else in my life for your own benefit, which in retrospect for you is _stunning_.”

“I didn’t want to hear you say her name to me and send me away,” the god said very softly. “Not when I had come to need you, to stay sane. When I was no longer imprisoned, I had hoped that need would fade, or at least decrease, but I still rather desperately want more of you in my life, Tony.”

Kissing him softly, the inventor said, “I’m yours.”

Loki buried his face in Tony’s neck and left it there, just breathing a while.

Tony rested his chin atop the god’s head and let his eyes fall shut.

They stayed that way for a long while, just lingering close, until knocking on the door indicated there was something vital (“probably ceremonial,” Loki muttered, “idiots.”) they needed their king to do immediately. Reluctantly, they let one another go.

“Tonight, though? Can you make it to the penthouse?” Tony asked.

“Yes,” Loki murmured. “I will be there. Tonight.”

 

~~

 

Thor was incensed by the time Tony rejoined him, interrupting the Thunderer mid-rant to Sif and the Warriors Three, and asking if he was okay, because he looked really stressed for _some_ reason.

The inventor was then glad he’d put his helmet back on before asking, because he hit the nearest pillar really quite hard less that half a second later. “So I see I still have some ‘splaining to do,” Tony coughed.

Thor shot him an unimpressed look. “You, sir, are no Lucille Ball.”

“You’re not allowed to watch old sitcoms with Steve anymore. Officially.”

“What did you speak to my father of?” Thor demanded, clearly maintaining any levity only with a concerted effort.

“Loki. He doesn’t think your bro is dead, bro,” Tony responded. It was all part of the plan, of course, and the trickster had mapped out his adoptive brother’s vulnerable points with the ease of long, long practice.

“What? How?”

“Well... you see, I kinda talked with him after the invasion. One of the last spells he did was to try to figure out how I resisted the scepter’s power, and he had enough link left to it to provide him a sort of express-lane to my head only for dream-walking. I haven’t seen him since his ‘death’ though, but first Strange, and now Odin, confirmed his spell is still around, and still linked, so he can’t actually be dead.”

The resulting thunderous flooding downpour that the skies suddenly dumped over Asgard within thirty seconds of Tony finishing his explanation really was pretty impressive. The power behind that wrath was, admittedly, a little terrifying, but Tony kept gesturing and shouting until he could be heard again over the thunder; although the rain persisted in a loud, torrential downpour against the roof.

“-just listen to me first dammit!” Tony concluded.

“I will hunt him _down_ ,” Thor snarled starting for the door.

Trailing after him––or more sort of being dragged by him––Tony tried to sooth the ire a bit. Facemask lifting, he said quickly, “Woah, _woah_ , hey, woah, hey, hey _._.. _woooah_ , no wait a minute.”

He stopped right at the door. "You have less than one minute."

"After a bit of tracery work, trying to figure out where the other end of the link I'm stuck with, Odin lost the trail somewhere in Nifelheim." He wagged his index finger. "Not Helheim. Nifelheim. Some 'Nameless City' there ring any bells?"

"But... why?" the Thunderer sounded more baffled. Better baffled than murderous; although there were definitely still plenty of potentially homicidal inclinations there.

"Apparently, shortly after his 'death' an artifact called the Casket of Ancient Winters sort of reappeared on the local galactic radar, and then disappeared again. It was used against the Queen of Nornheim very briefly, after she tried to hijack the Aether on its way back out of Asgard, and hasn't been seen since then, that Odin or Heimdall know about. So... why'd he protect Aesir delivery folk the likes of Sif with that weapon, and apparently go to Nifelheim?"

Thor blinked twice, his eyes alight with sudden realization. "They were the ones who created it."

"Destructive?"

"No... they are purely isolationist."

"Well then. Interesting."

"Do you... suspect my brother of reform, Stark?"

The inventor laughed at that, loud and long. He might have cough-snorted twice in vain attempts to respond before he could stop the laughing. "Hee... haaaha, ha, no," he finally concluded, from the floor, five minutes later, trailing off into much quieter giggles after. “Oh _fuck_ no.”

"But you do not think very ill of his intentions?"

"He... look, I mentioned he got bored and bothered me a bit, right?"

"You did, for which I am resisting the urge to damage you severely, until you do explain why you did not mention this before, to myself or indeed any of the other Avengers, who would have known better than to allow you to keep this from me."

"Too true, too true," Tony sighed, distracted momentarily by a bit of the rubble from the pillar earlier, as it only then flaked up and fell off his armor, as the inventor had subconsciously shifted his weight back onto his heels instead of leaning forward in a plea to be listened to. He then looked back up at Thor guiltily and explained, "Look, he and I sort of had an arrangement. I eventually persuaded him to at least keep me up to date on stuff in Asgard, and he was okay to escape into my head when I happened to be dreaming, because frankly just himself he's a lot less horrible than my regular frequent nightmares, but he would only agree to it if I didn't tell you, or any of the other Avengers because _they would tell you_ , out of fear for my safety alone. I'm sorry I took that risk, but I wanted to learn the twists of his brain a bit better in case we ever had to fight him again, so we wouldn't be caught so off-guard as we were in the invasion in New York. Okay?"

Slowly, the god of thunder did lower Mjolnir into a slightly less threatening position, if only by a fraction. "You are a fool, but I do understand that particular reasoning. What I do not understand is your apparent sympathy for him as a result, unless he has somehow tricked you."

"I'm a tricky rat myself, when cornered, and how much more cornered can I get than dealing with someone no one can prevent from dream-walking into my life even when he's incarcerated?"

"True," Thor conceded, thoughtful; although he was reading the inventor’s expression a bit _too_ shrewdly, for Tony’s comfort. "You became fond of him?"

"I understand a bit better how his head works, is all; although, as you've sort of awkwardly pointed out a lot, he and I weren't exactly dissimilar to start with," Tony admitted. "Also he's sort of got a lot of useful information and knowledge about how the universe works that I'm really interested in." He shrugged. "He's basically the nerd to your jock, except you’re the opposite of anti-intellectual, given who your girlfriend is. The point is that nerds like me, and I tend to like nerds. It's a thing. Trust and actual approval has nothing to do with it," he assured.

"I see." He lowered his arm so that Mjolnir hung loosely at his side. "Did he make any mention of his plans to you? Any hints or taunting?"

"Uh... the last time I saw him, he was sort of out of it, because despite dream-walking he was still present enough in his physical body to overhear some of, uh, your mother's funeral." Tony looked at him with his brow deeply furrowed. "He sort of thought it might be unlikely he'd come back if, as he suspected, you were likely to break him out when you made a run out of Asgard. I didn't hear from him again, and so I called you, and..."

Thor blinked at him, then sighed the most long-suffering sigh Tony's mortal ears had ever heard. "And you knew of Frigga already, but not of Loki. Of course he expected this."

"Well, yeah. He's got a kind of unique skill-set."

"You have no idea, then, why he faked his death?"

"Well, to get out of prison, obviously, but beyond that?" He shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. I mean, altruism isn't his usual M.O. so what would be the Nifelheim angle, anyhow? I don't know enough about that one. What are the people there like, even?"

"They are... well, they have always shown his daughter the utmost respect," Thor said slowly. "For the sake of Hel and Fenrir, my brother does tend to act in their best interest without as much thought for his own."

"I dunno, seems a bit indirect."

"What else could be his goal?"

"What sort of folks live in the creepy-sounding Nameless City, anyhow?"

"Jotunn of ice, the very first tribes of them, are the only race in the nine realms able to survive the temperatures of Nifelheim without magic to aid them in self-preservation against the elements. They are a strong and hardy people, more long-lived even than Aesir. Mostly, they are peaceful, but there were other tribes there, outside the Nameless City’s rule, who left Nifelheim and reconquered the home planet for all Jotunns with ice and darkness, long ago. As is obvious, they were never _peaceful_. They still are not."

“So... the place was divided between hyper-violent radical tribes and... pacifists?”

“I never said that they did not fight,” Thor corrected. “I said only that they are peaceful. The reasons they are peaceful and unified are because they are too powerful and clever to be challenged in battle by any who can commit the time and resources needed to reach their world, and furthermore there are three mythically powerful Jotunn mages, all unassuming women only one of them even very tall so it’s said, wandering about the community and punishing those who attempt to sway too much power over the free wills of others, going so far as to topple whole governments.”

“... Well damn.”

“Exactly,” Thor said. Then he frowned slightly. “Perhaps there are multiple reasons indeed for my brother to visit such a place.” He might have glanced in the general direction of the palace’s primary throne room.

"Is it possible he's got relatives there, now he's aware of being adopted, and all?"

Thor's eyes went very, very wide indeed. "By the nine! He might! We must to Helheim immediately."

"Wait, what?"

_That was not in the plan!_

 

~~

 

He at least persuaded the Thunderer to get Odin to approve the trip; although Tony hadn’t suspected that the god of lies perching on the All-Father's throne would ever actually _agree to it_ , and didn't entirely understand why until they arrived in Helheim.

Thor was tackled hard to the ground three seconds later, before they had even managed to take a single footstep toward Queen Hel's palace.

"UNCLE THOR!"

That growl sounded pretty menacing, considering it came from a wolf the size of a draft horse, but the fact Fenrir's mouth was wide open in a canid grin, tongue lolling as he struggled to keep Thor pinned, the actual-threat-level seemed pretty minimal, so far as Tony could tell. It went down to zero when the wolf began licking Thor's face aggressively, causing the Thunderer to swear and flail in an attempt to shield himself slightly.

Tony sniggered at them despite himself, but stopped when he heard a peal of delighted laughter from startlingly close by. He turned to see the Queen had appeared, and seemed to be watching her brother and uncle tussle with shocked, gleeful mirth. Hel, was as tall and elegant as her father, with her right side pale and fair with long, wavy hair the color of rust and a bright green eye, while her left side had sleek black hair, and skin coloration all in shades of dark navy blue, striped with fine black lines that formed designs that were alternately graceful and swirling, as well as more jaggedly angular, fitted together like puzzle-pieces, flattering the shapes of her limbs and her sharp features; although in just the right light the designs on her face could look just skeletal, or perhaps they altered slightly to become so; even she herself isn’t sure. On her left side, Hel's eye was black from lid to lid, save for the pale graphite-grey of the iris. Both of her eyes practically glowed with surprise and laughter.

She hadn't expected the visit, genuinely. It distantly occurred to Tony that for someone who could see the past, present and future of important events the way seers like Hel, especially powerful ones, seemed capable, small surprises that weren't due to enterprises of great pith and moment, that she couldn't predict, were probably important and precious to her. The incredibly touched and fond look on her face confirmed it, as she held both arms outstretched and called, "Brother, dear, do stop that long enough for me to greet our uncle properly."

Both wolf and Thunderer froze and leapt apart, Thor dusting himself off very quickly as Hel waited. Eventually she rolled her eyes and waved a hand, her magic sweeping over him briefly, leaving him free of debris and wolf fur. Only then did she run at him almost swifter than Tony's bare eyes alone could see, and launched herself at him. Thor caught her and spun her around, laughing raucously.

The inventor watched, and shook his head slowly as a smile tugged at his lips that doubtlessly made his expression look a little sappier still.

"Who are you?" the wolf then asked abruptly, somehow materializing directly in front of him at half the size he had been moments before––which only decreased him to be the size of a smaller breed of horse, his head and shoulders only at chest-height, rather than a foot or so over Tony's own head.

" _Holy fuck_ , you're disconcerting. Is the Cheshire Cat a distant cousin of yours or something?" Tony demanded.

"You haven't answered my question," Fenrir said, his voice lowering a little in pitch to a rumble that made the Iron Man armor––not rattle, per se, but it didn’t sit very still either. It was genuinely horrifying.

"I'm Tony Stark, and you're very clearly Fenrir Lokisson. Nice to meet you. I've heard about you a fair bit."

The wolf leaned a bit closer to the open face-mask, nose only a few inches from the mortal's face as he inhaled, slow and deep, through his nose, until Tony could feel a respectable breeze from it. Then a low, eerily familiar-sounding chuckle rumbled up from Fenrir's chest. "Interesting."

Belatedly, the inventor realized he probably still smelled like Loki a bit. Because of reasons. His face might have heated enough for the cold to sting it still more uncomfortably than before. Clearing his throat, Tony added, "I tend to be," as casually as he could manage.

Tilting his head and pivoting one ear back to aim toward Thor and Hel, now that they were speaking to one another quietly, more like monarchs than playful youths, the wolf nodded, as though confirming something to himself before fixing his eyes back on the inventor. "You told him father is alive, then."

"We have a plan."

Both the wolf's eyebrows raised. "You and Thor?"

"Nope. Well, yes, but it's part of the other one, technically, and Thor doesn't need to know that."

Fenrir's jaw opened a bit again, showing many more of his teeth in a grin, his breath forming less steam in the air than Tony's own for reasons the inventor was hesitant to inquire about. The tail-wag also suggested he probably maybe wouldn't be mauled today, which was good. Probably. He might still be mauled _later_ , but at least the details weren’t being actively planned yet.

"You haven't expressed disbelief in my naïveté yet," the inventor pointed out.

Again, the wolf chuckled. "Perhaps because I can tell you are not a man who would make such plans without taking the precaution of getting my father's sworn word. Even _I_ know that."

“I get the feeling that if you couldn’t outwit him at tricks like that, then he’d consider it a personal failure on his own part, but I never got the impression he was anything but impressed by, and in awe of you, perpetually.”

Something dark and distant, but more curious than violent just then, glittered in the wolf’s great jade eyes; they were the same color as his father’s, but with a burst of yellow right around the pupil and the outer edges of his irises were ringed with black.

Tony felt very small under that stare. Whatever exactly Fenrir was, was older and had lived many centuries in the land of the dead alongside Queen Hel. Over a thousand years of graves and winter winds had been captured by the mind behind those eyes, in the form of memories, long before even the birth of Howard Stark. Suddenly the inventor shuddered as though he could feel all of that cold hitting him squarely in the chest, and heard an utterly inhuman, animal rasp in his ear, _If he is too gravely harmed by you, then you will not die quickly._

“I figured that was a given, but I’ll make certain you and your sister get first dibs, if at all possible. Seriously, I’ll try,” Tony said quickly, “unless I didn’t do it intentionally, in which case you’ll know, because I will be running after whoever I can trace the responsibility back to, and I’d be glad of your help.”

The wolf snorted lightly, amused this time. “Good answer.”

"Fenrir! Bring Thor's guest to the palace with your own self!" Hel called.

"Yes, sister dear," he called back, sounding droll and mocking.

"Wait, what?" Tony felt like he was saying that too much today.

Then he was abruptly vanished, along with Thor and Hel.

They all reappeared in the center of a large, opulently decorated parlor. Well, all of the bipeds did. Fenrir delivered himself in front of the fireplace, where he proceeded to stretch languorously with a contented groan.

Ignoring him, Hel looked sharply at Tony. "Well met, Anthony Stark." She extended a hand to him.

Taking off one gauntlet, he reached out to accept the grasp of her darker hand, smiling a little. "It's an honor to meet you."

"It is," she concurred, aloof as a feline.

 _Yes. Definitely Loki's daughter_.

She then gestured grandly for them both to occupy the nearest couch, while she herself drifted over to a tall high-backed chair right across from it. It wasn't one she preferred when alone, as that throne-like monster was much closer to the fireplace, but it was clearly good enough for more minor diplomatic use. "Thor tells me that you discovered my father is still alive, Mr. Stark."

Tony nodded. "I did."

Hel shot a pointed look toward her brother, who flicked his ears eloquently with a slightly mellifluous and ridiculous-sounding huff.

Her eyebrows raised.

Fenrir fluttered his eyelashes coquettishly, which to Tony might qualify as legitimately the most absurd thing he had seen all day.

Hel held out a hand toward her brother, extending her index finger and then crooking it, beckoning him in a silent demand.

With a resentful groan, he rolled over once to draw closer, flopping like he had no bones.

"Fenrir!" she snapped.

The wolf pulled himself to his paws again and sauntered over until he could rest his whole head on her armrest and they could whisper to one another, far too quietly for even the suit's sensors to pick up, and the HUD couldn't make any sense of trying to lipread. Tony had no doubt there was magic involved in both cases. He glanced sidelong at Thor questioningly.

"Yes, they're always like this," said the Thunderer, without even looking. "They are master conspirators."

"Thank you, uncle," Hel said, smiling sweetly. "You say the nicest things." She looked Tony up and down with a new degree of highly suspicious shrewdness. She snapped her fingers and everything in the room around them went entirely still and silent, from the fireplace, to her brother, to the inventor. In the silent stillness, the queen stood up again, and strode over to the inventor. As soon as she tapped his forehead sharply with the tips of two fingers, he snapped out of the time-freeze and stared up at her sharply. A quick series of glances around the room made him pale only a little. "Did you actually stop time?"

"No, this is rather more illusory. In any case, time here is stranger than elsewhere in the realms.

"That's saying something," Tony muttered.

“If we need to talk for too long, I can make this stretch for quite a while."

“I’m all ears.”

"What are your intentions toward my father?" demanded the queen.

"Mutual ownership."

She appeared surprised. "You're serious."

"I was dating the perfect woman for a few years, and eventually worked out that he seems to be better for my health, mental and physical both, than she was because I don't feel like I'm hurting him just by existing being myself and acting according to my own nature, and furthermore he can keep up with my brain like nobody else, and he's also sort of gorgeous and lethal. For better or worse, those are all qualities that I sort of covet and adore by turns."

Hel tilted her head slowly. "How long have you been involved with my father?"

"Well... we met in Germany shortly after he stole the tesseract and all. And then we met again and he tried to put me under mind control with a scepter from Thanos, failed, and threw me out a window. He left a spell on me with intent to come back to it once it figured out why I was resistant to the scepter, but the answer to that is still unclear. He used his connection to the spell as an express-route for dream-walking to my brain, and we sort of maybe decided to have no-strings sex within some particular parameters, while he was bored in prison, to keep him from getting more bored, and because even while I didn't trust him at the time, not really, I did really want a piece of that. I’m not sorry for that."

She looked unimpressed.

"I'm not actually quite sure how that sort of transitioned..."

"You're aware."

He frowned at her. "Well... I've got a couple ideas, but I'm not actually that certain? I think it was pretty much down to when I was convinced Pepper was going to break up with me, and he was getting drunk with me rather than sit in his cell listening to everyone else in Asgard at Frigga’s funeral, and he went out of his way to point out to me that I was being an idiot because Pepper wasn’t even thinking of leaving me, but I had concocted this... I’d... fuck, I’d basically realized that, given the choice, I’d prefer to have him around, than continue sort making Pepper’s life increasingly difficult just by being Tony Stark and the man she loved. I just didn’t think it was even an option to ask. Well, I had, but then he did that and my brain sort of melted for a few seconds, and then I thought he was––that he didn’t want or need more, but later I remembered that’s sort of the opposite of what he does in... some rare cases, in which case I needed clarification, but he didn’t come back, and I kept having nightmares, and Thor told me he was dead, and then months later I found out he wasn’t. After that, I sort of accidentally hitched a ride to Asgard on my first try before I actually knew what I wanted to even say, but we ended up talking privately once I figured out he’s sort of masquerading as Odin right now, and then I hit him in the face really hard for making Thor think he’d died again and also for then avoiding me and letting me think the same, but he didn’t know it had actually caused me real pain, so I sort of threw a bunch of insight at him, and now I think we’re dating,” he rambled.

Hel sniggered. “Wow.”

Tony did not slouch, nor his his shoulders slump. Mostly that was due to the armor not letting him.

She shook her head at him. “I have seen you, Tony Stark.”

“Uhm... in what tense?”

“Most of them.”

“That’s deeply disconcerting.”

“I know.” She shrugged. “You’re welcome.”

 _Definitely Loki’s daughter_ , Tony thought, yet again. “Is this where you scare the daylights out of me about like your brother did? By the way: that the weird eye thing he did with winter and frost and time was really fucking creepy. Just saying.”

“Oh dear. He didn’t make it sound as though he smelled anything quite _that_ serious,” Hel mused. “Well... either that or he’s already decided that he _likes_ you.”

“The fact that he reacts the same way in both cases is a little dangerous, isn’t it?”

“No, for it’s not the trick itself which is important; it is _your reaction_ to it. Things may or may not be dangerous, depending upon how you respond.”

“So if I’d tried to bluff or bullshit, or flee?”

“Death, death, or being used as a chew toy until you decided to leave our kin alone,” Hel said. “You live, so I must assume that you made him laugh, for you could not have threatened him back with all that much sincerity, knowing as little of his true nature as you do.”

“I did.”

“Good.” She nodded. “I’m glad you survived, then. Now, come walk with me, but leave your armor here. It would be capable of neither recording my words, nor protecting you from myself, in this place and the cold will not bother you, while we walk.” She stepped back one pace.

Tony quickly found most of the suit’s functions were indeed offline. He removed it manually with a bit of effort, and followed where the queen bade. It became clear to him very quickly that the only safe path was within a few steps of her, she seemed to walk through doors that did not otherwise exist until she caught sight of them. Thus down two hallways, through a wall, into brighter daylight than there had been moments before, and the smell of slightly heady herbs.

“This is a pocket of another era that still lingers near my home. I think it belonged to a place in this world a very, very long time before the land of the dead became a part of the landscape,” she explained. “There is a garden,” she said. “If only for an hour or so, before a nearby volcano erupts. It’s terribly tragic, of course, but I find it easier, keeping away from that village entirely.”

“So basically, if you leave me here, I’ll probably be killed by raining down fire, you’re telling me.”

“Yes, quite so.” She smiled at him sweetly, showing off dimples that put even her father’s to shame. If not for the markings on her face looking suddenly a bit more like the lines of boned underneath her skin as the angle she looked down at him from, and how she seemed to be looking out through the back of his head whenever he spoke to her, she would seem much more innocent and adorable than menacing; instead, she was now officially considered scarier that her brother. “I have a feeling that if I did that, however, my father would be rather angry with me. He had seemed to be doing better... until the past ten months or so passed upon Earth.” She shot him a very pointed look. “Would you have any unique insight into that?”

“... He broke out of prison and started impersonating Odin?”

“No, that was cause for other worrisome issues, but this moping issue is not amongst them,” Hel sighed.

“Moping?”

“Brooding. Plotting the conquering places he shouldn’t, so that Fenrir and I have to remind him of his current goals. Almost provoking a new war with Nornheim.” She shrugged casually. “My father has a rather violent moping style, let’s say.”

“Can I quote you on that? Please?” Tony asked immediately.

“No.”

“Aw, but why?”

“Because he could too easily revenge it. If I’m going to share any embarrassing secrets of his, they will be selected precisely for how very little comparable levels of blackmail he has the option of retaliating with safely.”

“... What?”

“He, Fenrir and I set up a sort of value system for certain acts of betrayal, vengeance, retaliation and offense amongst ourselves, when I came of age,” she said.

“Wow. He’s a unique parent.”

She shot him a glare.

“In a good way. My dad sort of sucked, ask anybody.”

Hel looked amused and concerned both, in equal measure. “I’m sorry to hear that? Is he around here? You can yell at him, if he is.”

Tony snorted. “That is one of the coolest suggestions I’ve ever heard, but even if he were here, which seems unlikely, but I have no idea how any of that even works, no thank you. I’m fine without yelling at, uh, his afterlife?”

She giggled a bit herself at his reaction. “If you insist, then. We shall leave him in peace. For now.” Her eyes narrowed dramatically.

Tony applauded. It might have been a slow-clap.

Hel shot him a stern glance.

He stopped, and put his hands meekly into his pockets.

The goddess then smirked even wider. “Good boy.”

Tony blanched. “Uh... can I request you please not ever say that to me again?”

“Why... oh.” She blushed violently on her paler side as she seemed to see, in his expression, some indication that he was reluctant to explain that her father might have called him that a few times before. “I did _not_ intend that.”

“I did not interpret it that way, but I am letting you know it’s disturbing.”

“I’ll refrain, sorry.”

They looked away from each other for a few moments. Hel glanced back first, but Tony instantly caught her looking, and half a second later, they both burst into hysterical laughter.

Shaking her head at the scientist, the queen observed, "You are entirely ridiculous."

He only shrugged. "Pretty much, yeah."

Examining his embarrassed and slightly nervous and worried expression, she began to smile a little. "You do care for him, then."

"Somewhat against my better judgement, yeah."

"His past crimes don't weigh upon your mind?"

"Only insofar as learning experiences to try and prevent him doing similarly again in the future, if at all possible, and how to minimize damages in case the worst should happen. Also they bother me because, whether he'll admit it or not, they do still bother _him_."

"You do not judge him to be evil for them?"

"Ehh. Selfish chaotic neutral? Yes. Evil? Nah, not really. He doesn't have the dedication to enough of an ideology, for that. He doesn't want an empire, but nor does he actually want total anarchy. All he wants is to exist, and cause some trouble, and go all sorts of places people tell him he shouldn't go, and I kind of relate to that."

Hel nodded, thoughtful. "A fair assessment."

"He's not pure chaotic neutral, though, because he does have very real loyalties, mostly to you guys, a bit to Asgard and to Thor (again whether or not he'll admit it) and probably whoever his relatives are over in the Nameless City, a bit, though I'm just guessing, there."

"It's a good guess," she confirmed. "Laufey's lover, after all, was great-granddaughter of the first of the Three of Nifelheim. He has met her, now, and she did extend to him all the same rights within the city as any other citizen."

"The Three who?"

"The Three are the founders of the Nameless City."

"Oh! Right, Thor mentioned... oh wow."

The queen nodded. "I've known of them, and our connection, ever since I was told of my own relation to Laufey, but until fairly recently, I was quite sure that my father wanted nothing to do with our icier kin."

"I'm glad that's changed, then."

A relieved smile tugged at her lips. "I as well." She led him around a bend in the path, running her hands along the edges of low, fragrant shrubs.

"What sort of garden is this?"

"One full of plants with psychoactive properties, actually. I believe that, and some of the graves belonging to murder victims buried under those trees over there, have a great deal to do with why this pocket of time remains fixed here, ever-repeating. Ghosts are meant to have souls, after all, but I believe this pocket and space of time have a little something of their own far stranger." She inspected a few flowers, and pulled her face back from one in time for a bee to fly out of it dizzily and crash into the nearest tree. "I really should take a sample of that nectar to Hretha. I still have no idea what these are, but she might well know."

"Who?"

"No one you've met," Hel said, waving off the inquiry a little. "Come along this way; however, you must not touch any of these plants."

"Noted," Tony murmured, and followed her.

"What are my father's intentions toward you, and his feelings for you, in your own interpretation?" she asked next.

The inventor rubbed at the back of his neck and stared skyward for a few moments, as he thought about it. "He thought, until today, apparently, that my reaction to news of his death had probably been one of relief. He was wrong. I told him that, but I don't know how much he actually believes me. I seriously think he kept expecting me to disappear."

"You'll have to take care not to, then."

"Well, yeah, that's the general plan."

"And his plans?"

"How much has he told you about what he's doing pretending to be Odin?"

"Most of it, though only once pressed."

"Well, we're going to keep to most of that, but go a little more dramatic. That's part of why we told Thor. Him coming here wasn't exactly part of that plan, though."

"I see." She smiled a little knowingly.

"You... think it was in his plans, but he didn’t care to mention?" the inventor guessed, trying to read her meaning.

"I think my father knows when to allow for improvisation, within his own plans."

"So what are you going to tell Thor?"

"That father is alive, yes, but what does he already know so far about the Casket, if anything?"

"The whole reason he's here is because I sort of guided him to the conclusion that Loki dropped it off here."

"Oh good." She beamed. "You'll be slowly introducing him to the idea that father's current schemes will be beneficial to the rest of the realms then?"

He didn't know why he was surprised that she'd picked up on that already, so he stopped. "Yeah, while he keeps doing what he's doing, mostly, with occasional trips to Earth, as well. We might also have plans to make the Kree miserable for a while, in a realm-unifying sort of way."

"I didn't realize they were causing problems." She frowned at him slightly.

"Mostly on Earth, they are."

"Ah. I suppose I'll have to pay your world more attention."

"Does that suggest you won't be killing me then?"

"Not today," she said, cool and droll.

"Awesome."

Hel laughed at him only a little more, before leading him out of the garden and back into Helheim proper. “I find you to be completely unexpected, yet possessed of great potential, Mr. Stark. See that you continue to impress, won’t you?”

“I solemnly swear to do my damnedest, your majesty”

“Very good,” said the queen. “Let us return to the parlor.”

 

~~

 

Tony was able to get his armor back on by the time Hel started the rest of Helheim moving again, with just a snap of her fingers.

As soon as the rest of the room was back in motion, Fenrir gave an offended and deeply put-out groan, indicating that he had apparently noticed Hel’s actions; although Thor clearly hadn’t. The queen smiled at her uncle sweet as could be.

“I should inform you, of course, that the only representative of Asgard that the Nameless City has given permission to tread anywhere near their borders is, in the words of the First of the Three, ‘Frigga’s son of higher rank.’”

Tony managed to restrain ugly laughter, but it was a very near thing. It was good that he caught it though; Thor would look wounded at him and then guilt would’ve kicked in...

“Higher-ranking?” the Thunderer sounded perplexed.

“You’re only the heir to Odin’s throne, uncle. Not above it, as the Three themselves are, in Nifelheim.”

Thor’s expression fell open into a look of shock. “ _What?!_ ”

Hel grinned at him, positively feline in her smugness.

Tony decided that there was simply no way that there wasn’t a Cheshire Cat somewhere in this bizarre family tree. Truly.

“That is how they perceive him, these days,” Fenrir added. “Odin, of course, never even bothered to reach out to them, when they were robbed of their primary power source in the form of the Casket. They could have recaptured it, with some aid, but none was ever offered, until Loki returned it to them, in a gesture of good faith toward our kin.”

“So some of them _are_ kin?” Thor clarified.

“Laufey’s lover was descended from the first of the Three. So, too is our father, and so too, in turn, are we,” Hel confirmed. “I knew none of this, of course, before any of us knew of some of Odin’s more damning lies to father.” Her voice turned frigidly hateful, then.

“I am sorry. Had I but known-”

“We bear you no enmity, uncle,” said the wolf. “You, we do trust, insofar as we trust out own knowledge of your true nature.”

Thor frowned at that, uncertain and worried. “Is that... good?”

“Yes, uncle,” Hel assured. “It is. That does not mean, however, that we are prepared to reveal any of our further knowledge of father’s current plans.” She stood and strode back over to the god of thunder, to kiss his brow gently, but a bit dismissively. “I do thank you, however, for your visit. It is good to see you well, and to meet you too, Tony,” she said, “but for now, it would be best for you to return to your proper places.”

The world swirled around them in all the shades of light reflected off raven-feathers, and when it stopped, Tony and Thor were back on Earth, sitting on much more mundane (albeit tastefully modern and high-class) furniture, in Avenger’s tower.

“Well,” the inventor said. “That was educational.”

 

~~

 

Tony Stark did not do first-date jitters. He didn’t.

Absolutely not.

“And frankly, I’m ashamed of you for suggesting it,” he told Nat sharply.

“You’ve been back from Asgard and wherever else for only two hours, and you’ve showered, trimmed your hair and beard, you’re wearing one of your super-clingy long-sleeved shirts, and you’re pacing in the kitchen, trying to argue with an assassin about what tactics to use to persuade Thor he should consider that whole throne thing, while everyone else is ‘conveniently’ out of the tower,” Natasha said. “Clearly, you’re avoiding thinking about someone, and it’s someone you want to look hot for. I somehow don’t think it’s me, since you’re neither shirtless, nor on your knees, nor begging.”

“You are never to exchange notes with him,” Tony said sharply, in gravely horrified tones, before his brain could stop the words escaping his mouth. He then pressed the first knuckle of one fist against his lips as though trying to belatedly smother what he’d just said, because now she was grinning evilly and she really was terrifying. “Oh, this is so awkward, now you remind me of his daughter, this is so weird.”

Now she looked poleaxed. “You’re getting date-jitters over a man with children?”

“They’re... fully grown.” He cleared his throat. “Also none of them are human.”

“I didn’t even know you liked men,” Natasha sounded almost disappointed in herself, like this was a genuine wound to her pride.

“I like _him_ ,” Tony said. “Past experimentation in college hadn’t done it, even with guys I was aware of being interested in mentally, and was aware that they were attractive, but not actually attracted to per se, but hey it’s college and who was I to deny a nice-looking guy the opportunity to suck my cock if he asked if he could? I’m surprised you didn’t suspect, though, since you all know I have no gag reflex, ever since the time that Clint somehow persuaded us to play Truth or Dare in the Quinjet on the way back from that mess in Japan.”

“Your sword-swallowing explanation sounded like the truth.”

“It was... but also I thought trying giving a blowjob might be more enjoyable if I actually had a clue what I was doing, and decided to give it a shot. It did improve the experience, but I still just wasn’t that attracted to very many men. Like... five, barely, in my life, but most of those were like passing thoughts of ‘damn he’s pretty’ or something, whereas with this guy it’s a lot more ‘I need to see your hips move like that without all your clothes in the way, come here let me help’ if that makes sense?”

“... Yes, in retrospect, I’m surprised I didn’t think you were bisexual earlier either.”

“I’m barely a 2 on the Kinsey Scale. Really it’s just––this guy.”

“Whose name I probably will recognize, based on your determination to avoid saying it at all.”

Tony frowned at her. “Stop being observant.”

“Scarier than you have tried to make me. You won’t succeed either. Why do you feel like you can’t tell me who he is?” she sighed.

“You’re the scary big sister assassin I never had?”

She rolled her eyes. “Try again.”

“He hurt someone you care about, why else, with you? It’s not because I’d dare consider you a prude.”

“Who?”

“One of the ones who live here.”

“Clint, or you’d have told them, and they’d have told me.”

He was disconcerted by how accurate that actually sounded. “Wow, you’re right, I probably would’ve.”

“How long have you been together?”

“A day, but also technically a bit over half a year, about ten months ago,” Tony sighed.

“Before you and Pepper broke up?” she asked cautiously.

“Uhm.”

“And starting right after the invasion?” Her eyes started to narrow.

“I hate that you remember dates so clearly. You and Cap both.”

“It happens, when you live as long as we do. Or when you’ve ever woken up with a chunk of your life gone and only dates to go by to know how long you were under.” She shrugged. “Just a thing. So I remind you of Hel?”

“Yeah, the creepy smile was really––dammit, Natasha!”

Both her eyebrows were raised now. “Wow, where has _he_ been hiding?”

“Why aren’t you killing me, right now?”

“Because you haven’t lied, and if Loki had been fucking you for six months and didn’t actually damage you, then dropped off your radar entirely for nine or ten months, without harming you or Pepper or even getting anywhere near you it sounds like, but also apparently being mutually compromised enough to let you live after you figured out wherever his current hiding place is, and to risk showing up in this tower again as early as tonight, and for you to be happy about that and dressed up like it’s a date? That all indicates that he must really like you, to have not killed you by now, based on how he tends to treat other people. Keep up the good work. If he hurts you, I’m helping Thor end his life more permanently.”

For a long moment, Tony stared at her. Then he hugged her.

Startled, a little, she returned the gesture, and after a moment, patted his back awkwardly. “What’s this for, exactly?”

“Not stabbing me.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Or murdering me with just your thighs.”

“Right.” She patted his shoulder again. “You can let go now.”

He did. “So... my boyfriend is going to hand the throne back to Odin in about a year, and in the mean time we’re probably going to have some trade talks with Dvergarheim in a few months, which I figure we can use partly to get Thor into a kingly mindset, and you’re looking at me funny, now, why are you looking at me funny.”

“What ‘notes’?” she asked, sipping more of the drink Tony had brought her as bribery for all of this.

Tony’s ears and the back of his neck went red quickly.

Natasha choked on her drink and coughed for a moment, holding her hand up when the inventor looked concerned. “Wow, now that’s an image.” She lowered all but her index finger as she looked Tony up and down appraisingly for a moment and cleared her throat. “I... don’t suppose there’s video footage?”

“I wouldn’t share it, even if there were.”

“Wait he had an affair with you how long again? You’re always surrounded by recording equipment. No offense, JARVIS, and I appreciate you.”

“None taken, and thank you, Ms. Romanoff,” the AI said.

“Dream-walker.”

“Ah,” she said. “Complicated, then, but I can see the benefits to a lack of evidence.” She glanced down at the table for a moment. “And some pitfalls.”

Tony thought about markings he had asked to keep. “Fewer of the latter than you might think. Magic is fucking wonderful, by the way.”

“Oh?”

“You know what else is, too?”

“What?”

“You already know.” He narrowed his eyes. “And I’m extremely jealous.”

She frowned. “Pardon?”

“Multiple orgasms and a lack of refractory period.”

Natasha snorted, amused. “I’ll concede you the former-”

“You’re a super-soldier. I’m not forgetting.”

A smirk tugged at her lips. “Well, maybe.”

“Jealous,” Tony grumbled. “Except then I remember I’m dating a god.” He grinned smugly, then. “Yeah, life is good.”

“You look happy, again, finally,” Natasha mused. “It’s been a while since you didn’t have to fake that smile.”

“Your observational skills continue to frighten me a little.”

“I’m glad, is all. You’ll need that confidence, to face down the rest of the team and explain this in about a year.”

He froze. “Wait, what?”

“If you don’t decide to start creating an identity for him down here, along with maybe some positive PR, though, before that, it could get pretty messy. We should bring Pepper in on plans like that, though. She knows that world better than I do, and better than you do, and you know it.”

“Wait, what?” he repeated, at a slightly higher pitch.

“You do owe her that explanation, too, eventually. That you cheated.”

“It was... only in dreams?”

“Lame-assed excuses won’t fly here, Tony. You owe her better than that. We all do, for how good she is to you, and all of the rest of us Avengers, and you know it.”

“Dammit.”

“Would you prefer he have to explain to her why being around her will doubtlessly be incredibly awkward for him at first, if he’s going to be in your life as obsessively as I think you’re aware he’s capable?”

Tony considered that for a long moment. “See, this is why you’re my favorite strategist Avenger. Seriously, I love and fear you.”

“And Loki?”

“I’m more afraid of him not being around?” he admitted, with considerable hesitation. “That’s the primary fear, here, really.”

“How exactly did having sex in dreams turn into that?” she asked lightly.

“You really want to know?” Tony countered.

“Yes.”

“He... uhm. Notes. Lots of notes.”

“You’re submissive?”

“Occasionally?”

“With him?”

“Okay yeah. A lot.”

“New for you?”

“No.”

“With a guy?”

“New there, yeah. A lot.” He considered. “A **_lot_**. I would’ve done that a lot more, in college, if any of the sex I was having at the time had been that good and that...” He trailed off, gesturing vaguely. “We, uh, being the sort of people we are, got a lot into each other’s heads. He was basically trying not to go insane with boredom, and he’s worse than I am about boredom, and I was kind of willing to trade crazy hot sex dreams for the nightmares I otherwise had instead, just without being interfered with. And if it meant he wouldn’t worsen my nightmares, and I happened to get some pain-play catharsis out of it, amongst a lot of other... things catering personally to aspects of my psyche I could never even begin to tell Pepper about with her making this concerned face like she was so sorry I thought of myself in terms like that, and uh...”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “It got to where I was willing to risk having evidence in places, sometimes. That I could catch glimpses of throughout the day, and that made it like I was always thinking about him, and it god bad, with Pepper asking JARVIS if anyone other than me had been in the penthouse bedroom lately a few times, when she came back from trips, and him telling me reluctantly, and then Frigga was killed by dark elves and he showed up looking like hell, because they hadn’t let him go to his own mother’s funeral, but left him in a cage that let him _hear everything_ , and after that he broke out and faked his death and since then he’s been pretending to be Odin, and trying to prove that he would be a better king than Odin had been in centuries if he wanted to, and apparently succeeding lot, and he thought I’d be relieved to not angst over being with him all the time, and with Pepper, so he thought somehow that it’d be fine. He was wrong, because I’d already sort of fallen in love with his devious brain because he’s frankly brilliant, and mind-games with him are such a challenge, and also usually delicious, and then Thor told me he was dead and I was wrecked for a while, with Pepper helping me, so I had to make up a name and story for the ‘friend’ I’d said died, and made it some guy from MIT I knew before I met her, and I felt worse for all the lying, but I couldn’t stop it, at that point. Then I found out he wasn’t dead, and I’d missed him like air for so long it just... I fell in love. We both did. Quietly, without daring to tell each other about it, and it sucked, so I’m fixing it, and dammit he’s mine now, I’m keeping him, okay?”

“Wow,” she said quietly.

“Yeah, I know. Am I insane?”

“Well... yes, but I knew that before I moved into this tower with you and the rest of these lunatics, so apparently that part is just a requirement for being an Avenger,” she remarked, “We’re all lunatics, really, deep down.”

“I meant more than usual? Outside the ‘ok’ zone by miles?”

Her brow furrowed at him. “For the record, I dated the Winter Soldier.”

“... Okay, but you and he both survived, right?”

“Barely. Except when we were outright thriving, and those times were some of the happiest in my life, but that’s not what we’re discussing here. Do you trust him?”

“Only if he gives his sworn word since that seems to work, with gods. Even him. Thor confirmed that with all of us.”

“Right... only that far?” she hedged.

“Uhm... depends on what he’s saying, and the situation, honestly. I have to read him, but if I can see his face, I can make a fair guess about seventy-to-eighty percent of the time as to what does and doesn’t sound like bullshit. That’s if he’s just regular-level lying, not specifically trying to lie to me, which is admittedly a lot harder, but I’m not bad at it, either, so far.”

“By which you mean ‘all the time you spent having sex with him’?”

“It was really chatty sex that tended to do a lot of sinking deep claws into each other’s insecurities to hurt one another, and then twist it somehow and make it sexy and the shame would sort of transition into pleasure, into orgasm, to banter, to more banter, to magic, to another round with added riding crop. He helped me get over... some important things. And I think I helped him, too, more than I even realized, except that I’ve sort of seen what he’s been up to since his ‘death’ and it’s... Nat, he’s trying to give a shit about people in Asgard for two full years just to prove a point and put the nail in the proverbial coffin of Odin’s pride in his own superiority. Off advice I gave him the last night I saw him before his escape, okay? I’ve seen it, and spent hours poking holes in all of it just to make him explain more of the details than even he could have lied about so consistently. He’s... resenting every damn minute of it, but he’s still determined to do it. And I’m fine with that.”

Natasha blinked a bit, then pointed to the seat next to her in the breakfast nook. “Explain those plans to me then. Now. Then we’re calling Pepper.”

Tony exhaled loudly through his teeth. “Look, I have a date tonight.”

“Tony, this is important.”

“I swear I’ll call her the day after tomorrow. I’ll even bring you in on all the plans as succinctly as I can now, but in the next few hours, I’m going to be waiting for a god to show up in my penthouse, and I will not be paying enough attention to anything else. And then for about twenty-four hours after that, I’m going to be very happily, strenuously occupied unless I somehow seriously mess up. This is my plan.”

She snorted. “At least you’re aware of your own ridiculous degree of infatuation.”

“I just fucking found him today and I’ve only known he was even alive _at all_ for like two days before this,” Tony said. “I think I’m allowed to consider this pretty important, okay?”

“You are,” Natasha agreed. “It’s just... kind of adorable. It suits you.”

He might have blushed slightly. “Oh.” He sat down. “Right... so plans. JARVIS, project me the Nine Realms, just the worlds themselves, arranged like... yes, that.” He grinned at the hologram hovering over the table. “Right. So to start, Asgard, right?”

 

~~

 

After being unable to focus sufficiently on anything less complex, Tony had resorted to tinkering with a new gauntlet model while laying on the couch in the penthouse living-room. His first clue that he wasn’t alone was a sound faintly like the flapping bird-wings, but a large number of them, and a stirring of the air around him, both coming from right behind his head.

Shortly afterward, he felt long, familiar fingers card through his hair, and felt tension seem to drain out of him, radiating out from that point of contact to make his entire body feel warmer suddenly. “Loki.”

“Yes?”

“Hey.”

“Hello, Tony.” He sounded both mocking, and warmly affectionate.

After just staring for a few moments, the inventor admitted, “I have no idea where my words went. How are you?”

“Better, for being here.”

“Good.”

“And you?”

“Better, for you being here,” he agreed, feeling lame as he said it, though it made the god’s eyes light up ridiculously bright for a moment and suddenly Tony could regret nothing at all about having caused that. He took off the gauntlet he was wearing and sat up to set it and his few tools aside. “Natasha knows, by the way. She says hello and passes on a friendly threat to your life if you hurt me badly enough to merit the effort.”

Loki blinked a bit, almost startled. “Really?”

“Yeah. She likes you, actually. Platonically, in a respects-your-mastermind-at-political-strategy-as-a-Russian sort of way. She’s making a few contacts, and one or two demands from me, and we’re good.”

“Demands?”

“Uhm.”

“Tony...”

“You need PR work down on Earth, Loki dear.”

“Public Relations?” Loki clarified, after momentarily struggling to recall.

“Yeah. So far as anyone down here knows, you’re the crazy guy who led a bunch of aliens in an invasion a while back. A lot of crazy shit has happened since then, and the general public has adjusted to some new levels of crazy in their daily lives and some of the cultural implications thereof might be, but not quite enough not to try and murder you and I both if they suspect I’ve gone over to the dark side like half the world keeps saying that I will, or that I already have. So we need to make your image a bit less dark-side, but to do that, you have to be news-worthy at least three or four times in the next year. I figure Thor talking about you a little more sympathetically again, I can make sure actually interviews with the press about each occasion, I think. If we can change a few hearts and minds down here about you, and then if anybody does come for you after you hand the throne back, then the Earth might even stand with you, against them. You’ve noticed what happens, lately, to people who stand against Earth, right?” His smile was cocksure and pleased. “I think you have, you trend-setter, you.”

Loki gave a surprised laugh at “trend-setter”, and pulled the inventor to his feet in order to kiss him firmly, sweetly, for a few moments. “I do love your mind, Tony, and the brilliant twists of your workings.”

“Same to you, gorgeous.”

“And what was the part you don’t want to tell me?”

“I do PR appearances, but it’s not my game, Loki. You need an expert. I can recommend you the best single human being I know, to-”

“Pepper?”

Tony sighed. “Yes, which means, uhm, explaining everything.” He looked askance, then down, then met the god’s stare still more insistently. “ _Everything_. You. Me. And... things. Timelines.”

“ _Everything_ ,” Loki repeated, dubious.

“We want Natasha in, there’s prices, that’s how it works, wid’ Natasha,” the inventor schmaltzed.

“Fair enough. She’s worth a few concessions, yes. You’re certain this... you’re certain that Pepper can be told of this safely?”

“Yeah. I can handle it. I do still trust her, same as always.”

“A clean break?”

“Yeah,” Tony said, like he still could barely believe it. “Somehow.”

“You truly believe she and Natasha both would stand with me, of all people, against Odin?” he asked.

“I think they’d both stand with Thor against Odin, and that you’ve convinced Natasha so far that Odin is a threat to people she gives a damn about. So yeah, she would, because the enemy of her enemy is a good resource to have on hand. Pepper would because you’ve got the stronger case she can build a defense for. I just... still have to do the explaining of all of the things. Natasha is insisting on it, and I know from experience that she _will_ double-check.”

“Ah, of course,” Loki mused. “She is fond of you as well?”

“We work together and live in the same house, and are both twisted in sense of humor. I’m genuinely afraid she might skin me one day, sometimes, hon. I’m sticking to monogamy, with you, this time.”

“Good. Fewer people to murder,” Loki mused.

“... I’m serious you know.”

“As am I.”

“Not me though?”

“Hm?”

“The murdering?”

“You’re mine. Why would I damage the property that killing the offender would be intended to preserve sole ownership of?”

“Wow, I don’t know if that’s more crazy, or hot, or sort of both,” Tony said quietly. “Noted, I guess. You won’t need to do that, though. I’ll be handling the duties of telling people where not to touch me. If they get too handsy after that, feel free to break their hands, but only if you can beat me to it.”

Loki smirked, surprised and amenable. “I can accept that gladly.” He then let the inventor push him down onto the couch and straddle his lap. “I begin to think you’ve spent all day wanting to ride me, Tony.”

“Well, yeah,” Tony said. “Also working on keeping you.”

“I...” the god hesitated.

“Oh, I survived your kids by the way. Thanks for that.”

Loki looked suddenly stricken. “You’re well? Hel didn’t offer you any particularly memorable food or drink, perhaps? Do you feel unusually cold or distant?”

“No, actually. They scared the crap out of me, but they know your worth better than you do, so that’s only expected.”

“My worth?” he asked, uncertain.

“Yeah. You. Are worth a lot.” He grinned. “Anyone who tries to take you from me won’t like the results. You included, maybe, depending, but I figure our first fight will probably cause a lot of inevitable property damage, I’m pretty sure.” He cleared his throat. “Also, I’d like to place a request ahead of time for that make-up sex to last over a full day, if you can manage that for both of us.”

Loki drew him closer, then breathing him in deeply as he wrapped both arms about the inventor’s waist, and Tony's arms settled about the god's neck. “I didn’t know I had so affected you.”

“I had no idea I was less than transparent about that. We both really failed in the communication department, as far as wanting more than what we were doing at the time. So, I’m trying to fix that. You should own me. And I you. Right?”

Loki nodded firmly. “Yes. Absolutely.”

“That’s the only promise I need you to make me, then, I think,” Tony said. “Isn’t it? That I’m yours? And you’re mine?”

The god’s expression fell open in a look of understanding and moderate awe. “Yes. I... would be...” He swallowed tightly and reached up with one hand to tangle his fingers in his lover’s hair and grip tightly. “Yes, I will swear it, I _do_ swear it,” he gasped, and rolled the inventor under him swiftly, pinning him along the couch bodily and kissing down one side of his neck while tugging his hair to pull his head further back, and expose more of Tony’s sensitive throat.

“Y-you do? I don’t have to sign anything in blood? That’s-Mmmnnn––yes, I love your mouth, but seriously I can-”

“Tony.”

The inventor fell quiet, and stared, recognizing that tone as the one Loki favored for getting his attention, while also sounding low and content enough that Tony knew he was doing well. “Yes?”

“I do swear to be yours, and that you are mine, only if you truly wish me to, and are certain. Are you?” he asked, carefully, glancing up to meet his eye, even as his lips still brushed Tony’s skin.

Tony made a show of looking like he was giving it very serious thought only just then, and eventually grinned fiercely. “Yeah. I’m sure. So now you’re mine.”

“Yes,” Loki said, barely a breath, and captured his mouth in an almost bruising kiss, hungry and unrestrained in reverent affection.

Attention fully captured by the masterful tongue doing things to his mouth that made Tony want to throw caution to the four winds and request they elope or something else ridiculous that would involve some way to show off that this one was _his_ , and as owned and cherished as Loki’s kisses made him feel.

“Now imagine that in public for a second, and the fact anyone in a twenty-foot radius would know you’re mine,” he said. “Still want me?”

“For you I might even follow out of the shadows, pet, but I’m strangely confident that you won’t force me to. You know how all that light hurts my eyes.”

“You’re ridiculously sexy when your voice does that, my god, I missed you.”

Loki smirked at him. “I missed you as well. You haunted my dreams for how they were never more than glimpses and memory, and haunting predictions of my own darker nature occasionally distorting them.”

“You mean you dreamt you hurt me.”

“Among other things. I would tend to awake screaming, actually. Not very good.”

“Loki, I thought you were dead.”

The trickster suddenly seemed to realize the full implications of that, and the rest of the days new lessons. “I’m sorry,” he said uncertainly. “I didn’t know-”

“I know,” Tony said. “But you really need to stop dying so convincingly in front of Thor. You know this won’t work after a third time, and won’t even work the third time unless you leave an actual body identical to yours that is dead, and he destroys it with lightning or something ridiculous. Seriously, way to over-use that one.”

The trickster helplessly sniggered.

“What?”

“That was exactly what I thought after I did it.”

Tony laughed. “Seriously?”

Loki nodded. “Not exactly verbatim, but yes, that was the gist. Also an addendum that I should intersperse it with dying horribly in front of someone different next time so that Asgardians would believe it at all.”

“Because if it was from Thor they really wouldn’t, that’s funny! And sadly accurate,” Tony concurred, giggling helplessly, though it trailed off slowly as the god kissed him again, hands moving over his body with more purpose and intent, now, finding buttons and seams, and then moving with a spark of something almost like static electricity but distinctly greener.

Feeling his shirt sliced open with a hiss of air, from his collar and down each sleeve, as well as right down the middle, the inventor made an appreciative sound and wriggled the little bit necessary for the cloth to slide off him entirely. The wriggle might have coincided with rolling his hips up to grind against Loki’s.

Tony counted it a victory when this led the god to pin his wrists above his head with one hand and push down his hips with the other.

“ _Greedy,_ ” he chided, breaking the kiss, then paused.

“I’m not the one whose been quite as bad this time, can I get some consideration?” he cajoled, then noticed the god’s expression. “What?”

“It’s gone.” He reached out and touched where the reactor had been. “I hadn’t realized... how long?”

“Uhm... only a month or two after you got out.”

Loki leaned in to kiss the scars there reverently. “I never did find out what about your arc reactor technology blocked the scepter’s power,” he wondered aloud, glancing up into the inventor’s eyes again. “I got rather distracted.”

“And I’m so glad,” Tony countered, playful, then gasped sharply at the trickster’s unexpected bite right over his left nipple. “Fuck _yes_.”

“I will give you what you need, you know this, my love.”

The endearment sent a shiver through him. “Yes, Loki,” he murmured.

The god smiled down at him, then, not so masked as before. Tony personally found it a bit unfairly stunning, just show beautiful so many of the brief micro-expressions that crossed his face were, when he so relaxed. Then his thoughts cut off again because the rest of their clothes vanished and Loki slid down between his legs to immediately lick Tony’s cock from base to tip, long and slow.

The noise Tony made then wasn’t one he was proud of, but since it seemed to prompt Loki to swallow his entire length down and suck _hard_ like that, Tony proceeded to enthusiastically make it again. “F-fuck, oh my god, your tongue is amazing, never stop being amazing for me––ohh––my god, please, I can’t hold back if you keep-” He then gave a loud cry as one long, lube-slick finger pressed into him, slow and relentless and- “There, yes, _yes_! L-let me come, please?” He then whined when his query prompted the trickster’s mouth to retreat  back up his length slowly.

“Not yet, Tony.”

Feeling that finger joined by another, Tony arched his hips down against the pressure against that particular spot inside him, and moaned despite attempting to keep it stifled. “P-please.”

“You stretched yourself for me, didn’t you?”

“I-I-” He might have blushed furiously. “Y-you can tell that?”

“It was an inspired guess. You accommodate two fingers more quickly, but I suspect...” He added a third.

Tony hissed despite attempts not to.

“You must have missed me terribly. Did you use your own fingers, darling?”

“Y-yeah.”

“Nothing else.”

“Didn’t have you around at the time. Had to make do with shower functions. So mostly water,” Tony panted, smirking a little at the raw lust in his lover’s expression as the scene unfolded in Loki’s imagination. “Thanks for that education, by the way.”

“I wanted you to think of me whenever you used them.”

“Yeah, that totally worked,” Tony admitted. “I can show you, if you like.”

“Mmm, yes, perhaps in the morning.” He licked the head of the inventor’s cock again, and reduced him very quickly back to whimpering in barely-coherent syllables, while fucking him a little faster with his fingers.

“Th-the morning?”

“Your schedule is clear for tomorrow, is it not?”

“Yeah.” It had taken some last-minute scrambling and begging Pepper for the favor and persuading Natasha to help him persuade her without getting into the uncomfortable details of the whys and hows and I’M SO SORRYs until they could speak with her in person the day after. But yes, Tony had the foresight to consider that marathon reunion sex with the god of mischief might be a particularly epic endeavor. “You should stick around for as much as you can spare.”

“I’ve made a few arrangements, though they will not last beyond that, for a few days after.”

Tony tried to pout, but then Loki started to withdraw his fingers entirely, and he gave it up in favor of a growl.

“Plans, pet. I need to keep you, too, after all, and that requires the walking of new and unfamiliar tight-ropes.” He then abruptly dragged Tony back into his lap turning them so that the god leaned his back against the couch, with the inventor draped over him. “I would like you to fuck yourself for me. I want to see how you’ve so missed me.”

Tony settled his weight on his knees and nuzzled against Loki’s neck for a moment, as he raised his hips up, smirking when the god chuckled at him while slicking his own length, though Tony’s expression fell more open as he sank down, guided by the trickster’s hands. Eyes falling shut for a moment, Tony just focused on the sensation of his own breathing, and staying relaxed as he gripped Loki’s shoulders hard for sufficient leverage to push himself down a little harder, feeling Loki’s grip on his hip tighten and suddenly pull him down more sharply––all the way down.

The inventor’s ardent moan in response pulled a low hum of approval from deep in Loki's chest as he ground their hips together slowly. “Now ride me.”

“Yeah,” Tony panted, pressing close as he did, for more friction between them as he raised his hips up slow, savoring the fricative drag of Loki’s cock almost all the way out of him, before he rocked himself back down hard again, making them both keen. After rolling his hips up again, and then rocking back down twice more, slowly and experimentally for just a moment, Tony anchored himself a bit better against the couch and Loki’s shoulders with the position of his hands and feet, and then developed a demanding rhythm, hard and quick, soon making himself and the god both breathe more raggedly. When Loki tugged one of the inventor’s knees sharply forward and to one side soon after, just slightly changing Tony’s angle of descent, Tony moaned his name and began to speed up his pace, leaning forward and burying his face against the side of Loki’s neck as another moan escaped him.

He nuzzled closer still, when Loki’s fingers ran through his hair again and the god  murmured filthy praises and endearments close to his ear.

“You’re so exquisite like this, so open and giving, like you want nothing more than this, to use and be used by me. You feel so eager for me, so wet and pliant to fuck into.”

“Th-then fuck me, please,” Tony moaned. “H-harder.”

“Show me more, pet.”

Tony slowed then, shifting the weight of his hips to rest up and back  further, and began to deliberately work Loki slower, holding the god’s gaze steadily as he teased himself and the trickster both with slow, sensuous undulations of his hips, grinding down over Loki’s cock with each descent. His skin flushed hotly as he displayed himself so, and let himself let go enough to make all of the smaller sounds he more usually struggled to hold back. He didn’t even realize when exactly he started to chant a low mantra of, “Please, please, please fuck me,” under his breath, interspersed with incoherent noises and Loki’s name.

“Tony,” the god breathed, watching him heatedly. “ _Faster_.”

Struggling to obey, despite how close and how sensitive he now was, Tony let out a shuddering breath. “Loki, please, I’m so close.”

“As am I, but I have no plans to stop, and nor do you. Come as you need to, but do not, my pet, let yourself stop.”

Tony moaned softly, a needy sound, as he began to move faster, and with less grace, hasty with desperation as he fought for more friction where he needed it. “Please, Loki, make me come.”

“Oh, pet, I think you can come just from my cock in you.”

A breathless hum, high and wanting, caught in the inventor’s throat. “Loki, oh fuck, please touch me.” He wasn’t expecting the sudden slap on his ass but it drew a high yelp from him and made him jerk in surprise, loosing his rhythm and bucking down hard against Loki, taking him deeper than before and making him groan. He could feel the trickster restrain himself from jerking up into that closeness, but only barely.

“I want you touching me,” Tony pleaded. “I want to feel you mark me, and don’t you dare heal a single bruise or bite, I’m keeping everything you give me, everything.”

“Yes, take of me everything, for as I am yours, I would see you _claim_ me, Tony Stark,” the god commanded. “Fuck yourself on me as though you would own me.”

“Grab my hips harder,” Tony said. “Mark me yours.”

The god’s fingers squeezed tighter, though his arms remained relaxed, letting Tony’s increasingly-impatient and hasty thrusts grow shallower and harder. He bent his head down to the inventor’s neck and bit the left side sharply, sucking hard and feeling Tony’s body go bowstring-tight against him and shudder, as familiar, pretty moans escaped his lips and he struggled past the point of discomfort to keep moving, even as he felt Loki’s hips jerk sharply as he finally came, breathing hard and hot against Tony’s skin, teeth still holding tight.

True to his word, the trickster didn’t even pause, even when sounds escaped him sounding of discomfort and little shocks of too-much-too-good that sent shivered down through Loki’s spine as he continued to move, now gripping the inventor’s hips with both hands spread wide and pounding up into him until the mortal almost screamed for mercy. Then slowly, slower than it had been in dreams, heat crept down Tony’s spine from the base of his skull, straight down through his pelvis and then out through the rest of him, sending creeping little shocks of bliss across his skin as he flushed redder still and a keening, pleading voice escaped his throat from the moment he was fully hard again, begging for more and harder. He screamed outright when Loki finally let go of the first bite-mark and promptly left a matching one on the other side because he was clearly evil and- “Oh fuck, yes Loki please, st-stay with me this time, please, please!”

“Oh, my love,” Loki promised. “I fear you will now never be rid of me.”

As far as reactions to that statement went, moaning the god’s name in his most degenerate-sounding voice and coming again unexpectedly hard, surely was the best possible option, Tony thought, after he had done it, and dragged Loki over the edge with him by begging to feel more of the god’s come in him.

“I really like the idea of keeping you,” Tony panted. “In case you doubted.”

Loki smiled at him helplessly and pulled him close for another kiss, more soft and unhurried as he rolled his hips just sharply enough to make the inventor gasp into the kiss, allowing the god’s tongue to slip in deeply, quick and dirty enough to make Tony moan even though he still shivered with aftershocks of hyper-sensitivity with even the slightest friction against his cock.

Breaking from the kiss, the god said softly, “I think, however strange it is to say, that I do truly believe in you, Tony, my love.” He kissed his lips again chastely this time. “My pet. You are perfection, to me.”

“Silver-tongue, yes, I love you too.”

The trickster beamed then, wicked and thrilled and pleased. “Honest silver, in this  case.”

“I know,” Tony said, and hissed tightly at the feel of another prickling of magic over every inch of his skin. “Oh, my god, did I mention virility blessings are so awesome, holy fuck how are you still so hard?”

“You are simply _inspiring_ , Tony.”

Tony moaned at that, and when they teleported: disappearing from the couch and reappearing on his bed, Loki already hooking a knee over each of his shoulders. “You could be a god of inspiration, could you not? You already are, here on Earth, and you well know it.”

“Oh my god, how are you talking like that when you’re in me like––hnngh, fuck yes that, Loki...”

“I would have your answer first,” again, the god began to slow, and halt.

Tony whined. “What question?”

“Would you?”

“Would I... be _a god_?”

“As the current rightful king, I could easily provide, should you desire.”

Tony giggled, pleased and thrilled. “It’s good to be the king’s impersonator, for once?”

“Mhmm, yes, but also while Odin in a sedated state unable to rule, but not killed, and Thor declined the throne when I did offer it in Odin’s guise, the tools of the king, and the magics both, recognize me as true king, however ironically,” Loki added. “You could be nigh-irreversibly made a citizen of Asgard.”

“ _Nigh_ -irreversably?”

“Try not to commit treasonous regicide against the king.”

“Ooh, tough.”

“Only for a while longer.”

“What’s the catch?”

“You live several thousand years longer, generally.”

“Wait, what?”

“I want you to be my equal, in strength and longevity, and I want to see what you can make of it that no other being in all the universe possibly could, for I can think of no future for myself not made better by your being in it.” Loki touched his face, trailing long fingers down the lines of his cheek and jaw. “Think on it?”

“I’m going to go with yes,” Tony said, “actually. Yeah.” He grinned helplessly. “Yeah, keep me as long as you want, just stay with me awhile, as long as you can maybe, or as long as you can stand me, sorry, I-” He was cut off by a firm kiss and the god beginning to pound into him, hard and deep and merciless. “Oh yesss, Loki, _please fuck me_ harder, make me feel you for days, please, I need it, _please_.”

“What will I then give you?”

“What I need,” Tony panted.

“You need more of my cock so deep inside you that it aches?”

“Y-yes!”

“You need to see my marks all over you, claiming you mine?”

“Yes!”

“You need me?”

“I’ve needed you for ages, Loki, please don’t stop,” Tony half-sobbed, despite himself, “Don’t stop, don’t fucking stop.”

“Never when you need me so, my love,” the god panted, stroking the inventor’s cock with one hand, dry enough to make Tony shiver and whine in slight discomfort. “Come, Tony, for you have me; I am yours.”

The inventor trembled and came with a few muffled, gasping breaths as Loki stroked him and rode him through it, before coming apart himself, and letting go, clinging close to Tony all the while, as though he feared being sent away, even then, or perhaps for the dream to betray him by ending again.

So Tony pulled him closer, draping himself with the heavy-as-fuck god for only a moment before deciding to roll them over and settled himself on the god’s chest with a comfortable huff, as they both caught their breaths for a few minutes.

“We have a lot of trust issues, I think,” Tony muttered.

“Very true,” Loki agreed, sounding amused.

“The sworn word thing though, is a brilliant counter-measure.”

“I commend your linguistic choices there, yes,” the god murmured. “I never would have thought of that...”

“Seemed easy. If you swore that you’re mine, you’d have to act like it, which would be a bit impossible if you didn’t actually believe it, knowing you.” Tony lifted his head enough to rest his chin on Loki’s sternum and glance up at him. “So you’d either agree, or I’d be in a very uncomfortable position, but I... really hoped you’d agree. And thought you probably would.” His face reddened only a little more, even still flushed from sex as he was.

“I had thought I must have been deluding myself, with you, for so long. I was locked in a cage with no solace save for you, and you seemed inclined to accept what solace I provided in favor of nightmares I had inflicted. I had no idea...”

“You helped me. I told you.”

“You did. And I believe you.”

“Half-lie?” Tony guessed.

The trickster stilled. “Pardon?”

“I’m right?”

“...”

“I’m right!” Then his smile dropped. “Why am I right?”

Loki opened his mouth, then closed it again, continuing to stare.

“I had months to study the minutiae of your expressions to learn how to play you as much as you played me, just in different ways, and you think I didn’t pick up a few of the other general basics?” Tony inquired flatly.

“I love you,” the god said, with conviction.

The brief tension in Tony’s shoulders evaporated. “Good.”

“I will require a little time to adjust to my life having become uncommonly wonderful within the past day, my apologies. I’m terribly out of practice,” Loki murmured. “I will endeavor to improve. That is an easy task, compared to what worlds I would be willing to conquer for your sake, if you only asked it of me. I would be unable to resist.”

“Make me your world a while. Then we’ll talk about possibly adopting, remaking, or creating our own others,” Tony murmured.

Stunned momentarily speechless, Loki shot him a surprised look.

The inventor only grinned back.

“You...”

“You heard me.”

Loki pulled one of his mortal’s hands up to his lips and kissed the lightly-scarred palm with reverence. “I am so glad that I propositioned you.”

“Actually, I was the one who asked why you were even wearing pants.”

“You weren’t aware it was truly me.”

“Minor details.”

“I requested your consent. You then gave it. Therefore I propositioned you, and you accepted.”

Tony opened his mouth to argue, failed to come up with an argument, and swore.

Loki chuckled at him. “You’re a wonder, my love. A wonder, a ridiculous creature, a marvel, with the soul of a true mage, and a mind like no other, and I am confident that you will never cease to surprise and delight me.”

“I like how you follow up winning an argument with praising me and stuff, actually. This is the best petty argument I’ve ever lost. Do you usually do this?”

The god smirked. “I will now.”

“Aw, damn, You’re gonna use this.”

“As will you.”

“Well, yeah,” Tony admitted, with a soft laugh.

“You keep up with me so. I had thought... I had thought it illusory, how well you...” He looked away. “I had been all too aware of what I wanted to see, for some time.”

“How long?”

“A little more than three months.”

Tony smirked a little. “It was close to that for me too, with you,” he admitted.

“How close?”

“I... I knew how much trouble I was in by three months with you. By four I was in love with you, but didn’t think I could have more than the sex,” he said softly.

Loki hummed, thoughtful and affectionate.

“That’s weirdly sexy and comforting at the same time.”

The trickster hummed again, this time ending on an ascending note, like a question of some kind.

“Yes, that, ‘s gorgeous. You’re gorgeous. Everything about you. It’s unfair and I love it anyway,” Tony mumbled, enjoying his new body pillow’s various functions.

“I think I’d like to ride you through the mattress next,” Loki mused.

“Like... ride...”

“Your cock, yes, after I affix a ring about the base to prevent you finishing too soon. I think I’ll ride you until you’ve come so many times that you pass out, in fact.”

Prodding Loki’s chest with a finger along with each word, Tony insisted, “Keeping. You. Yes. Perfect.”

“I concur, and feel the same about yourself.”

“Yessss. Good.”

Loki made another amused humming noise, then abruptly shoved his lover aside just enough to roll him onto his back on the bed, and pinned him there bodily. “Are you ready for me, darling?”

With a content moan, Tony wriggled his ass a little. “Magic is wonderful, please use it, because I’m still mortal and my cock is sort of still aching from _hwaaahhhhyes that magic, oh that’s good_ ,” he moaned.

“Very good. Let us begin again.”

“Yes. Yesssss oh fuck!”

It was, needless to say, a very long night.

 

~~

 

After perhaps two-hour nap just before noon, being spooned by the god of mischief, waking up with the trickster still there remained one of the most ridiculously content and pleased moments of Tony’s life. He felt protected whether he needed it or not, and cherished, and wanted, and it was just an absurdly warm-and-fuzzy feeling.

Also, Loki was hard against his ass, which was great-

Right up until his stomach snarled audibly, loud enough he could feel as well as hear Loki twitch awake quickly, and then proceed to giggle at him in the wake of it.

“I suppose sustenance may be in order.”

Tony sighed. “Yeah. You ever had Vietnamese food?”

“That I’m aware of? No.”

“We could order some...” He started to get an idea, and it made him start to grin a bit evilly. “Maybe enough for the others, too. Want to scare them over lunch?”

“... Is that wise?”

“Nope, but it should be fun.”

“They won’t turn on you?”

“... Thor is out of the tower, so no.”

“You believe he would disapprove?”

“I believe he’d be mad that I lied about what went on when you dream-walked into my brain and all. And the part where I never mentioned my love of your cock.”

“He might possibly be a tad irate about that, I suppose.”

“You didn’t see his face when I told him you were alive, dude. His protective instincts are scary-irrational, a bit.”

“This is very true,” Loki concurred with a sigh.

“... Seriously, though, the only one will probably try to kill you is Clint.”

“I could apologize?”

“Sincerely?”

“... A bit?”

“Stick with disarming frankness and using it as a way to keep him off-balance.”

“I can do that.”

 

~~

 

Natasha was the only one at the table, at first, when all of the food arrived, but Bruce smelled it or otherwise got some memo, and soon appeared in the doorway. “Tony order in?”

“Apparently.” Walking around the food, she did a quick portion-count and tilted her head, lips pursing.

“What?” Bruce asked.

“Thor is at Dr. Foster’s.”

“Yeah?”

“So why is there enough here for all of us, plus someone with an Aesir appetite?”

The biochemist considered. “Guest?”

Natasha stood very still for a moment. “If he thinks he can just-”

The elevator from the penthouse quietly dinged on the opposite wall. As the doors opened, she watched them, glaring slightly, and was very glad that Bruce didn’t have the same clear line of sight that she did. “He did.”

“He what?” Bruce asked, hesitantly.

“He brought his new boyfriend. Please stay calm. I’ve been assured he should be harmless as long as no one makes any sudden moves of an aggressive nature toward Tony, and they’re walking rather close together, you see.”

“He has a what? He likes men?”

“You too?” she sighed. “Damn.”

“Well who is-” Bruce started to ask, then stopped because they had stepped into the room and Loki, standing right beside Tony with a hand resting on the inventor’s lower back, was looking at him like he was caught right on the cusp between the instincts of fight, flight, or remain-frozen. “Um... What. Haow... w-what?”

“Long story, Brucie. I’ll tell you later. No mind control involved, by the way. We’re secret-dating for a while until some plots come to fruition, don’t worry about it,” Tony assured, as he began digging about through the take-out containers. “Grab two large bowls or for us, Nat, while you’re over there? We’re gonna need it for the Pho.”

She glared at him.

He glanced up at her. “Sorry? he tried.

“You aren’t,” she accused, even as she handed him the two bowls.

“He’s not,” Loki agreed quietly.

Tony elbowed him and shot him a scowl. “I trusted you.”

“She’s only being sensible.”

“I didn’t hear you complaining before,” the inventor accused, put-out.

“Darling, I managed to fall in love with _you_ of all people, and somehow earn your affection in turn. Clearly, I’m fond of bad ideas just as much as you are,” the trickster countered, his smile terribly affectionate.

“You saying I’m a bad idea?”

“The worst,” Loki deadpanned. “And I do love it.”

“What the fuck is happening, and who drugged Stark?” Clint suddenly asked, from the doorway. He looked predictably livid. “And what are you fucking doing still alive, and will you stay still for a second.” He pulled out his gun casually, and swore when it seemed to turn into tar in his hand at a quick spell from the trickster. The archer swore, trying to get it off of his hands.

“Stop shaking it everywhere,” Bruce said quickly. “Just stop.”

“But I need to try to kick his ass!” the archer insisted.

“That’s adorable,” Loki crooned, accepting the cup his lover put into his hands.

“No, you can’t keep him. _You_ are a strictly one-pet Dom,” Tony muttered under his breath, so that the others couldn’t hear, but Loki could.

The trickster might have then choked quietly on a sip of coffee.

Clint was looking green suddenly.

Natasha took one look toward her old friend and sighed. “He can lip-read, you know, guys.”

Tony might have promptly felt a blush heat his ears, creep up the back of his neck, and appear as if by magic across his cheekbones. “Oops.”

Loki, however, only kissed the inventor on the top of his head, wrapped both arms about his waist, and shot the archer a challenging look.

Clint shuddered and headed for the door. “Gimme a few minutes. I need to try to purge a few mental images I desperately want to unsee,” he said, and left the room quickly.

“JARVIS, if he tries to call S.H.I.E.L.D., do an impression of Coulson for him, please, and keep me informed,” Tony said.

“You think he would?” Bruce asked warily.

“Or a Maria Hill impression,” Tony added. “Depending on which he tries to call first. Got it?”

“Yes, sir. He seems to be heading back into the air ducts again, presently.”

“Cell reception is shitty in there. He probably doesn’t plan to call anybody, then,” Tony mused. “I’m glad I didn’t fix that yet.”

“Are you seriously planning to?” Natasha said. “How vital is cell phone signal in our air ducts?”

“How many vital texts has he missed because he was in an air duct?” the inventor shot back. “Nine, Nat! Nine.”

“It’s a chronic thing, yeah,” Bruce agreed hesitantly.

“Ridiculous,” the assassin muttered. “All of you. Hand me that bún, please, Loki? Yes, that one. Thank you.”

Bruce blinked a bit. “When did Natasha become your new therapist Avenger?” he asked Tony blithely.

“Strategist Avenger,” Tony corrected, putting together his own and Loki’s Pho bowls, pouring the still-steaming broth over the noodles, vegetable and meat. “You’re still technically therapist, but I got tired of you sleeping through appointments, so I’ve been skipping them for several months.”

“Aha,” Bruce said. “And when exactly did this...” He gestured between them.

“Yesterday,” Loki said. “Also a bit over a year ago, technically.”

“Of course it’s complicated,” the biochemist sighed. “Look at you two. Right. Fucking complicated, got it.”

“And complicated-” the trickster began, only to be cut off by Tony putting an Asian soup-spoon into his mouth to halt his words there. Loki removed it immediately and glared at him.

Tony winked in response and murmured, “Punish me later,” close to the god’s ear, just as Steve strode into the room asking who had ordered Vietnamese and then stopped, staring. “What the heck is going on and did I step into another dimension again?”

“Universe,” the inventor corrected, reflexively. “It was an alternate universe, and we got you back. You’re still in Kansas, Toto.”

“Loki?” the super-soldier asked hesitantly.

“Yes?” the trickster responded.

“Why are you in our kitchen?”

“I was offered sustenance by my lover.”

Steve opened his mouth, then closed it. “Weren’t you dead?”

“Thor thought so, yes.”

“Again?”

“Yes, I’m aware, it’s a stretch,” Loki sighed, regretful. “But it had to be done.”

“Why?” Steve asked, very curiously.

“I planned to try the advice offered to me by someone I had come to cherish. It’s working out so far better than I could have imagined, and I plan to keep the best parts for myself,” he said, his arms around Tony’s waist visibly squeezing just a little tighter for a moment, making clear just whom he planned to keep.

“Hey, Steve. You’ve met Loki, obviously. I’m dating him now. Problem?” Tony cut in gently, smiling with all of his teeth.

“You’re... not killing anyone?”

Tony said, “No,” boredly at the same time Loki started to say, “Not in any direct manner, so far as I’m aware, at present, so it’s not my intent.”

Steve stared at both of them, and just how in-tune the two insanely brilliant men clearly were with one another, and how Tony seemed to be leaning against Loki’s chest like it was the back of his rightful throne, at the same time that the god’s hold about Tony’s waist looked protective, and possessive and warning, in a way. “I get the feeling I couldn’t stop you two if I tried,” he said slowly.

“You are correct,” Loki assured.

“Okay. You hurt him, though, he’s one of ours, and we’ve taken you down before,” Steve reminded him. “We can do it again.”

“I plan to keep only gifts freely given,” the trickster assured. “That I can swear to you, if you would like.”

“Wow, really?” Bruce asked, sounding stunned.

“I’ll second that,” Steve said, his eyebrows raised almost to his hairline.

Even Natasha seemed a bit surprised, despite being more forewarned.

“Really,” said the god. “I do swear it.”

“I feel like my honor is being argued over,” Tony sighed. “I’m right here.”

“If it were a matter of honor, darling, I doubt you would have so ensnared me, in the first place,” Loki remarked idly.

“True,” the inventor conceded. “Very true.” He then managed to persuade Loki to occupy a chair instead of his backside, and then sat down beside him, as the others also approached the table, and sat down.

Clint returned. “Can I at least stab you one time later?” he asked Loki.

The trickster considered. “If you can manage it.”

At that, the archer grinned. “Alright. I’ll work on that. No retaliation?”

“Beyond the reflexive?”

“You took over his brain,” Tony reminded. “Restrain those a bit. You’ll know it’s him, I know you will.”

The god frowned a little. “Fine. Yes. No retaliation: I agree to your terms.”

“Okay.” Clint nodded. “I’m actually okay with that. You sticking around to blow things up with us instead of against us, or blasting back to fantasy land later?”

“The rest of the galaxy, save for just over a dozen people including yourselves, remains under the impression that I’m dead,” Loki said lightly. “My PR work will need time, before by being seen in public, even providing you aid, would be any sort of good idea, Mr. Barton.”

“You regret taking over my brain?”

“You were the most psychologically resilient, well-connected both within S.H.I.E.L.D. and beyond, and skilled tactician available, I was able to ensnare,” Loki said. “So no. I do not.”

Clint frowned a bit, but then shrugged. “That makes sense, mostly, at least.”

“I take it Thor doesn’t need to know about this?” Bruce asked lightly.

“Accurate,” Tony said, before taking a large bite of noodles and beef and Thai basil with a content noise.  
“I’m trying to put him on the throne, eventually, but he’s unwilling, and I’m not so dedicated to kingship as I may have led you all to believe, initially,” Loki added. “Odin, also, is going senile, and it is causing problems.”

“Thor keeps saying he’s actually doing really well this past year,” Steve said, with audible hesitation.

The trickster and his human, now both with mouthfuls of noodles, exchanged eloquent glances and swallowed after another moment.

“That’s been me,” Loki said. “Ever since my most recent ‘death’ I’ve been impersonating Odin. Selfish of me? Yes. Am I also so far seeing more progress under by own short reign than Odin has managed to achieve within the past three centuries? Also yes.” He smiled at them sweetly. “I’m simply bringing a few point home, you see.”

“What progress?” Bruce asked.

“I’m repairing relations between Jotunnheim and Nifelheim to overcome a cultural rift and an historic genocidal atrocity from the past of the lineage of the late King Laufey-”

“Your real dad?” Clint clarified.

“I’d rather be considered a bastard, honestly,” Loki responded curtly.

“Sorry, my bad.”

Tony leaned closer and “Hey.”

Loki met his gaze for a moment, then seemed to shrug off the interruption and continue, “As Mr. Barton so tactlessly points out, yes this is in part repairing my own legacy by unmaking the mess of my biological father’s father, who froze Jotunnheim in the first place. It was originally a very verdant world with vast mountain ranges and terrifying storm systems that could live for many days at a time, sometimes years.” As he spoke, he arranged a bit of each ingredient in his soup into the spoon, arranging a single immaculate bite, and proceeding to delicately devour it all at once.

“Also the trade thing,” Tony added. “You opened up travel options other than the bïfrost between realms, for trade, without giving them anything as dangerous as an actual bïfrost to fuck about with. That’s clever, _and_ good politics, despite how often those two things can be mutually exclusive.”

“That too, yes,” the god murmured, like he wasn’t certain that they would be interested in that.

“How?” Bruce asked.

“Paths of thin interdependent interconnections between each of the realms of Yggdrasil, accessible by means of exploiting weak areas between crossroads of two such connections, paired with an equally weak barrier between the Astral Plane and reality opened very close to it,” Loki said, after a brief hesitation.

“That sounds awesome,” the biochemist mused. “I demand diagrams.”

“Perhaps another day,” the trickster mused, now intrigued. The quiet doctor’s natural exuberance for new knowledge shouldn’t have surprised him, but somehow, it did. He was too used to Asgard, where such enthusiasm was not exactly frowned upon, it was considered “unlucky” at best and “publicly scorned” at worst, depending on quite what sorts of questions they tended to ask. “I would like that, I think, Dr. Banner.”

Tony rested his leg against the god’s under the table. “Hey.”

The trickster turned to him with the same neutral expression he had aimed at Banner, but as soon as he met Tony’s gaze, his face began to light up with pleasure and wicked mirth. “Yes, darling?”

Since his brain had gone a bit gooey watching that transformation of Loki’s entire face from the mask he was more familiar with, and this less guarded version the god was consciously letting off a leash usually kept very short, the inventor had trouble responding immediately. “Did I mention yet today that you’re really attractive?”

“A few dozen times in the early pre-dawn hours, yes.”

He nodded. “Good. Just checking.”

“Goddamn, are you two in like some sort of honeymoon stage or something?” Clint asked sharply, “because I am suffering a sudden case of a acute tooth decay from how sickly-sweet that was.”

“I thought he was dead until a few days ago, dude, fucking deal,” Tony snapped.

“Fucking christ, you have answers for everything! I give up! I’m shutting up.”

“Anytime now, Clint,” Nat said.

The archer frowned at her.

She shot him an unimpressed look.

He muttered something incoherent and took another bite of his Banh Mi, only a bit sullenly.

“I take it there’s a long, complicated, and highly risqué story behind all of this?” Steve asked, sounding resigned, as he added more fish sauce to his dish.

“Yep,” Tony concurred.

“And we probably don’t actually want to know,” Bruce added.

“Also an astute assessment,” Loki agreed.

“Good to know, I guess,” Steve muttered. “Also highly disturbing.”

“How do you think I feel?” the trickster god said flatly. “You know my brother is never going to let me live this down.”

Tony frowned. “What?”

“I might have said a number of things implying his choice of relationship was unwise due to Jane’s mortality, when I was also trying to resign myself to not seeing you again, and my words were more vitriolic than altogether wise, let’s say,” Loki hedged, with obvious reluctance.

As he had expected, they all shot him looks that loudly implied “serves you right” and a couple of amused and thoughtful noises, just briefly.

The trickster shrugged helplessly. “Centuries of habit. It’s a work in progress,” he admitted, with only a little reluctance.

Steve just looked amused, but also exasperated and shook his head. “So you were your usual self, then?” Steve asked. “Just... based on stories he’s told me.”

Loki cleared his throat. “Perhaps.”

Suddenly, the super-soldier’s smirk was a bit knowing.

“Thor is so never letting you live that down,” Tony giggled, having finally come to terms with Loki’s admission.

“Yes, I believe that was what I said.”

“Jane might, though, so he might go easier on you than you think,” the inventor then added.

“Truly?”

“If you actually apologize believably.”

“Hmm.” Loki appeared genuinely thoughtful, then.

“Why’d you two break up before you faked your death?” Bruce then asked, having just worked out something of a time-line in his head, and started connecting up bits and pieces.

“It’s... complex,” the god said slowly.

“No comment,” Tony said. “Maybe later, okay?”

The biochemist nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah. Okay.”

The rest of lunch passed, from there, in relative peace. Except for Clint being fussy over the super-villain’s occasional mocking.

 

~~

 

After spending the rest of the following day and evening having sex on every feasible surface in the penthouse (or so it seemed), they did eventually part ways.

The next morning, it was time to face the music.

Pepper.

“I’m really, really sorry that I’m kind of a terrible person, just to start off.”

She sighed. “I’d wondered how long it was possible for you to go without having to start off an explanation with that. I thought you were doing so well.”

“I’m doing really well, of very recent, but to explain why, I have to explain some things I’ve done that you’re going to want to stab me with your fork over, probably, and I’m sorry, I was stupidly selfish and-”

“Tony, just say it.”

“I met a guy.”

She raised an eyebrow. “A guy. New, for you, but I’m not actually that shocked somehow.” Pointedly glancing down at his neck and some of the extensive marks he was sporting, the then coolly met his gaze again. “The marks high on the back of your neck are about as distinct as how gingerly you just sat yourself down. Good for you, finding someone new. What’s the catch?”

“So I met the guy around the time of the uh, invasion. The first one.”

Pepper raised an eyebrow. “Met in what sense, exactly?”

“Violently, mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“Well, I was... wow even in my head that sounds ridiculous. He’s got a sort of raw sex appeal it was really difficult not to notice, and I noticed, but I didn’t say anything. There might have been mutual sexual tension, but I’m not actually all that sure.”

“Who is he?”

“Uhm...”

“ _Tony._ ”

“Loki.”

Her eyelashes fluttered in a nonplussed series of blinks. “I’m sorry... what?”

“Thor’s adopted brother?”

“How?”

“Specify?” Tony hazarded.

“How... did you... you’re saying you cheated on me?” she snapped, voice a bit brittle.

“Uhm. Only metaphysically... mostly. Except a few bruises. Even with him under lock-up, nobody can stop him waltzing into other people’s dreams, and he showed up in mine, and dreams are supposed to be harmless, but it didn’t turn out that way. I’m sorry, I fucked up, and I was selfish and terrible, but I tried the best I could to make sure my being that screwed up in the head didn’t hurt you. I didn’t do the greatest job, but I... I didn’t want to say no, as much as I should have, and I’m sorry. I really am.”

She sighed tightly, blinking back tears with the apparent ease of long practice. “Okay. You lied to me, you cheated on me with someone who wasn’t even human, and furthermore who tried to invade the planet-”

“I mentioned I’m screwed up in the head-”

“-and whom you’d rather blame your reactions to him from the beginning on some fundamental flaws in yourself, which is a bit unfair to someone you’re currently still having sex with. We weren’t going to work, and rather than admit it, both of us tried to make things work for far longer than two less stubborn and intelligent people, who care about one another like we do, might have done. I... considered, occasionally, lookin elsewhere, too, but I couldn’t be yet another betrayal in your life.”

Tony winced. “Wow, Pep. Ow.”

“You deserve it,” she said softly. “Did he even care? That you had me?”

“He, uh, knew. He respects you, and he actually left me out of the blue entirely because he was convinced that I needed you more than him, because of the good you’ve always been in my life, and because he did know how much I loved you then, and how I still love you now, even though I’m pretty sure Natasha is going to hurt me for this whether you ask her to or not.”

“I asked her to refrain, when she offered, based on how much this conversation might piss me off.” She cleared her throat. “She offered, I suppose because we’ve been dating for two months.”

Tony stared. “You like women?”

“I... like Natasha,” she said quietly.

Now his mouth was hanging open. “She’s who you ‘considered’ isn’t she?”

“It’s different. I’d never––before. You’d at least done enough random craziness in college to have some more experience with someone else’s equipment of _either_ sex.”

“I knew she liked you,” he mused. “Didn’t know she _liked you_ liked you.”

“Can we go back to making you feel bad about cheating on me?”

“It might take an effort. Especially since the mental images this information provided me are pretty incredible. Just... damn.”

“Stop it,” she muttered. “Behave. You have a boyfriend.”

“I thought he was dead until three days ago. He was.... I lied, about the guy from MIT. That was me after I found out Loki was killed. I’m sorry about that too. I didn’t want to lie, but I was terrified of losing you too. I didn’t so much as look at anyone else after that. It was only you. I do want you to know that.”

She considered, thoughtful. “You didn’t tell him anything about how much you really liked him, did you?”

Tony let his eyes full shut and his head hang forward. “ _Yes_. I didn’t.”

“And he thought he wasn’t wanted as much as he wanted?”

He nodded, and then ran his hands over his face.

“Was the sex that good?” she asked, sounding hurt.

“It was... never just the sex, Pep. I... I told you, about uhm, my pain thing. And how I’d been submissive before,” he explained haltingly.

“Wait, you weren’t just cheating on me with an inhuman male god, you did so with kinky bondage involved? Is this a joke?” she sounded sincerely baffled.

“You know, until you mentioned it, I hadn’t actually seen it that way.”

She inhaled sharply through her nose. “So he’s dominant.”

“Very.”

“I’m so glad I’m over you,” she sighed. “And also dating a woman too hot for you, actually. It’s a very comforting sort of thought, somehow.”

Tony snorted, then went back to looking abashed again.

Pepper tossed a napkin at him, just before their entrees arrived at the table. After taking her first bite of lobster, she made an obscene noise at the flavor and continued, “I’m gonna need a while to forgive you and recover my pride, but I need to understand what the fuck was happening in your head that you seem to have believed, for over a year, needed to be hidden from me.”

“Mostly not wanting you to look disappointed in me for some of my self-loathing-related issues, my particular kinks, and my life choices, because you keep hoping I’ll do better for myself, but I don’t... I’m not a good guy. You know I’m not, and don’t tell me otherwise just right now. Listen... so dream-walking.”

The story, in all, took a few hours to get through, during which they eventually left the French restaurant and walked around a bit before finding a cafe to sit in to finish the last of the whole sordid tale.

“And I introduced him to everyone in the tower except Thor over lunch, and that’s about it.”

“You what?”

“Steve, Natasha, Bruce, and Clint all know. And not even Clint actually tried to call S.H.I.E.L.D. and bring them down on Loki’s ass, even.”

“Are you two really _that_ sickeningly adorable together?” she asked.

“Maybe,” Tony admitted. “We might have decided to play that up deliberately just to keep them at an optimal level of discomfort and confusion.”

“You say that, and I start to understand a bit better how you snagged a god of lies,” Pepper mused.

“Yeah.” He grinned down at the table helplessly. “We sort of improbably work.” Then he suddenly got a look in his eye and fixed his stare right on Pepper’s. “Notes!” he said suddenly, in tones of awestruck revelation.

“What?” she asked, uncertain.

“You find out you’re submissive, recently?” he asked, curious.

She blushed scarlet. “That’s... none of your business,” she said quickly, “that I’m a switch anyway and why am I still talking OH MY GOD!” Covering her mouth with both hands, she glared at him like this was clearly all his fault.

Tony giggled. “How fucking ridiculous are our lives, Pep? How?”

“I’m very uncomfortable, stop talking,” she insisted.

“Sorry, but just...”

“I’m having enough trouble trying not to imagine a tall dark god bending you over and making you scream, so, yes, this is uncomfortable for a lot of now embarrassing reasons,” she said quietly. “At least I’m wearing deodorant this time, oh my god.”

“I’m glad she’s good for you,” Tony said. “You’ve been happier, lately.”

“I have,” she agreed quietly. “And she is. Good for me.” Glancing up at him, she asked lightly, “Yours?”

“Yeah. He is.”

“That’s good, then. He needs a PR makeover.”

Tony pressed his palms together as though in prayer. “Please help me, Obi-Potts, you’re our only hope! And the best qualified! And an amazing and beautiful person who apparently has seduced a ninja.”

“Stop,” she said. “I’ll work on it. I’ll let you know when I have some ideas.”

“You’re the best. You are the best, most good and warm-hearted and generous-”

“I’m not letting you tank my company by dating a former super-villain out of the blue,” she interrupted him. “Not without preparing for battle, anyway. Save your groveling for your new personal god.”

“I do love him.”

She looked up at him sharply then. “You do?”

“Yeah.”

“And it’s mutual?”

He nodded, no hesitation. “Yeah. It is.”

“Good,” she said, smiling a little warmer still. “I’m glad to hear it. Now let’s talk redemption scheduling and arrangements for the illusions we can most feasibly accomplish to make your evil boyfriend look better in the press.”

“I love your brain,” he sighed. “If I weren’t taken, I’d propose to her.”

“She’d turn you down.”

“That’s because she’s always been that little bit wiser than me, that way.”

Pepper shook her head at him. “Focus, Tony.”

“Ma’am, yes, ma’am.”

 

~~

 

When Loki arrived in the penthouse two nights later, and was told that he had about an hour before Tony’s last meeting of the day would end, allowing the inventor to return home, he hadn’t anticipated anyone else showing up beforehand.

He certainly had not been at all prepared for the person in question to be Pepper Potts, in her full authoritative CEO power-wielding splendor. “Glad I caught you,” she said. “Luckily I was nearby when JARVIS let me know you arrived.” She strode up to him on sharply clicking heels and leaned into his personal space.

Loki let her, curious and more deeply impressed than he wanted to let on, by the fire in her expression and the shrewdness of her stare.

“I don’t make weapons. I don’t design them, I don’t operate them,” she said. “I organize and direct _people_. I know an awful lot of very powerful people who can acquire power and weapons in such quantities Tony still hasn’t worked out what I’m fully capable of, if it came down to it. It would change me to do it, and I really don’t want to have to be that person, but I can be. I can be, for Tony, because he’s one of the closest and best friends I’ve ever had, because I believe he’s capable of great things and want to help him achieve them, and because I love him like he is family to me, because he, Rhodey, and Happy, are all the ‘family’ I have left.” She raised an eyebrow archly. “Do we have an understanding, that I will end you, if I need to?”

“We very much do,” he said, quite sincerely. “I am not here to damage him.”

“Much,” she said lightly.

“No more than he requires, and we both appreciate.”

Pepper nodded. “Good. See that it stays that way.”

“I plan to.”

“One more thing.”

“Yes?” His head then cracked to the side sharply as she struck him hard across the face.

Swearing and shaking out her hand, she sighed. “Sometimes I miss Extremis.”

Loki reached out one hand, palm-up, in a silent offer.

She placed her own hand there.

The god healed the pain and inflammation easily. “Better?”

“Yeah,” she said, uncertainly.

“I want you to know that I hold you in the utmost respect, and I’m glad you’re still a part of his life.”

“Silver-tongue, right?”

He inclined his head. “Yes.”

“Good,” she said. “We have work to do, and you’ll need that.”

Loki appeared a bit startled.

“You’re dating an international icon, and a living legend,” she said. “Welcome to the Stark Industries Three-Ring Circus, Mr. Lie-smith.”

“Oh,” he said quietly. “I see.”

She grinned at him fiercely, and he swallowed a hint of genuine fear.

 

~~

 

Tony found them an hour later, talking in an involved manner, Loki gesticulating wildly as he ranted about something, while Pepper barely managed to keep a straight face. He had the disconcerting thought that they might be talking about him.

He shuddered, and let the suit come off piece by piece as he strode in from the landing pad into the living-room.

Loki turned out the be recounting a story about a particular earth mage the trickster regarded as even more foolish than Thor. Recognizing it as one the god had told him before, while they were drunk, he smirked a little, and slowly approached his own couch, and the very sexy, intelligent and dangerous people on it, both of whom he still loved, albeit in different ways.

First to spot him was Loki, who lit up with a grin at the sight of him. “Tony.”

Pepper turned her head to shoot him  wry look. “You didn’t mention how PR-savvy your lover is. I’m disappointed, Tony.”

“He is?” Tony asked.

“I’ve been playing the court of Asgard for a long while, darling,” the god chided.

“There’s very good reason Pepper does all of my PR,” Tony aid. “Because I wasn’t actually sure those skills were applicable across realms with no mass media?”

Loki rolled his eyes. “We have media. It’s not so primitive as these tablets-”

“Hey-” Tony protested.

“The point is that we have plans in place now. You’re both well on your way to legitimacy in public and in private... planning ahead a year in advance... after having only just started seeing one another romantically?” she asked. “You two really are certain about all of this?”

The pair looked at one another, then, and smiled, then met Pepper’s gaze again. “Yeah, I think we’re good,” Tony said.

“Likewise. If my attachment to this man were inclined to dissipate, I think it would have done so after I spent over nine months believing I could never have him, and that I was not wanted,” Loki said flatly. “I am a long-lived creature, but this particular degree of fixation is unique, for me.”

“I thought he died. Still didn’t actually give up, found out he wasn’t dead, and immediately started on a new bïfrost hijacking project,” Tony added. “Pretty sure we’re broken, and this is weird and moderately insane, but that it’s what we want.”

“Quite possibly it suits us precisely because we both are insane and impossible people,” Loki then concluded, in a slightly more airy tone.

“Alright,” she said softly, more than a little impressed. “Then I’m off to put one or two calls in place, to start your mad machinations through their early phases.” Squeezing Loki’s shoulder, for a moment, she said, “Meeting you was awkward, but I might not hate you much now, so keep up the good work, and remember in what situations I can and will end you.”

“Thank you, Miss Potts,” he responded politely.

“He has better manners than you,” she said to Tony, as she rose to her feet and stepped back into her sandals.

“Thank you for not killing either of us,” the inventor responded. “I now need to check him over for injuries, of course. Very thoroughly. Don’t spoil the end for me.”

“He’s not injured,” she assured, hugging him, briefly.

“You might be lying,” he accused, even as he hugged her back.

“I’m not,” she said, mussing up his hair as she stepped away and into the elevator, at which point she waved cheerfully at both of them before the doors slid shut and she was taken down back to ground level.

“So,” Tony said gingerly.

“She is an extremely formidable woman,” Loki said. “I’m impressed.”

“That’s what she’s good at,” Tony said, a little proudly. _See my beautiful friend. See that she is made of sunshine and snark in equal measure, and is wonderful._

“Do you miss her? Romantically?”

“Not as much as I missed what I had, and wanted to keep having, with you. That was a bit of a revelation, when I figured it out, after finding out you were still alive.”

“Oh.”

“Hey, Loki...”

“Yes?”

“I thought about it more.”

“Specifically?”

“I think there was an implied apple.”

“Yes.”

“You _did_ bring it, then,” Tony said, reading his lover’s expression closely.

“I might have.”

“You did,” Tony said, and leaned down to kiss him for a long few moments.

“I did.”

“How long, after I eat it, will I have a refractory period more like yours?”

Loki’s eyes darkened further and his lips curved more wickedly. “I suppose we shall find out, after your initial metabolic increase.”

“The what?”

“Aesir and Jotunn alike, while they can be mostly human-sized, in height and dimensions, tend to be more super-dense, insofar as composition. Your metabolism requires extra fuel, for the magic in the apple to take more successfully.”

“So we’re also getting a vast dinner?”

Loki grinned up at him. “A feast, Lord Stark?”

“Wow, that’s new. I dunno how I feel about that name.” Then he called out, “JARVIS? Order all of the Thai food, please. Or, at least enough for everybody else in the house, and about three of Loki, to be safe.”

“Right away, sir.”

“Thank you, J.”

Holding up the apple from out of nowhere, the trickster said, “For you.”

“That is very shiny.”

“It’s a golden apple, Tony. Shininess is sort of-”

“I know, I know. I’m just...” He reached out a hand, and caught it when the god let it roll toward him. “Wow.” He looked down at it, and at Loki. “You really...”

“A gift, on behalf of Asgard’s rightful king,” Loki said softly.

A prickling tingle of cooler, older magics than those the trickster usually used on him, sparked across his nerves for a tremulous moment. “And I accept it,” he said softly, and bit into the apple. Crisp and sharp, all freshness and sweetness, cool and sharp, the taste lingered on his tongue as he ate, in small bites, the whole fruit, leaving nothing behind but a stem before he again met Loki’s eyes. “I’m keeping you.”

“Yes,” the god agreed. “Me too.”

Tony let himself be pulled into the trickster’s arms and kissed him with fervor, surrendering himself utterly, and with pleasure, to Loki once more.

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt was literally "kinks" and somehow plot happened. I have no explanation.


End file.
